Feminine

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) is launching the Global Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women! Following the International Day Against Violence Against Women, on 26 November 2007 WLUML will launch the campaign at Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws is launching the Global Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women! to end the persistent misuse of religion and culture to justify killing women as punishment for violating the norms of sexual behaviour as defined and imposed by vested interests. This Campaign is inspired by and grows out of women’s struggles in their own locations to combat various manifestations of this phenomenon, for instance in Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran and Nigeria.  The Campaign will support and enable wome’s rights advocates, national and transnational women’s movements to resist those forces which politicize and mis-use culture and religion for subjugating women and the abuse of their human rights.

The Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women is initiated by a group of activists, lawyers, journalists, and academics, who are committed to ending the stoning and killing of women. Stoning to death is a legal form of punishment for adultery of married persons (zina al-Mohsena) in Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria (about one-third among 36 states), Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. Recent cases of stoning by state authorities have mostly occurred in Iran, where stoning is not limited to adultery. Elsewhere, such as Pakistan and Iraq, incidents of stoning have tended to be carried out by communities, rather than the state. In Nigeria and UAE, sentences to death by stoning have been overturned after strong international protests.
Women constitute nearly all those condemned to death by stoning. Why? Because discriminatory laws and customs almost always assign more guilt to women than to men in any manner of action that is seen as violating norms of sexual behaviour, especially any instance of alleged sexual relations outside marriage (zina). Men are entitled to marry more than one woman and can use this justification for sex outside marriage. They are also more mobile and can more easily escape punishment.
In many other countries, women may also be killed by their own family and community, should they be accused of contravening sexual mores, including accusations of committing zina. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, so-called honour killings(or rather, dishonourable killings of women) have occurred in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom.The increasing trend to control women’s bodies is also evident in countries where women are not stoned or killed, but are whipped for the same alleged crimeof zina for example, in parts of Indonesia. The Global Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women urges the United Nations to investigate these serious infringements of International Human Rights Law and the international community to send a clear message that it is unacceptable for women to be tortured and killed.

For further information please see the attached documents.

In solidarity,

WLUML
International Coordination Office

Update:

Tha government stopped implementation of Delaram’s sentence for a while.( Source: Radio Zamaneh)

When I am in a meeting which there are some of the feminist activits around the world, I become more energetic and more enthusiastic to do something important, to pace a bigger step.But, when I look to the situation of women’s activists in my country, Iran, all of my energies vanish suddenly. When I see that a woman activist is arrested and is sentenced just because she was participating in a calm demonstration,it make me frustrated.

Delaram Ali, one of the Iranian women activist have to go to the jail  asap because her presence in a demonstration last year. Because she was trying to aware people about the discrimination existing in Iranian society against women. Because she wished to eliminate the unequality among women and men in her country.

Delaram is the representative of Iranian women’s activist, us, that are striving to achieve a better, equal and happy life for women in Iran. But she will be imprisoned. Why? because goverment think her activites is against “national security”. I do not know what this “national security” is but I know most of the time the human rights and women’s rights activits are silencec in the name of it.

We should not let it happens not for Delaram, Not for anyone women and humen rights activist.

Then Please sign the Petition.