By Armelle Le-bras-Chopard
Translation: Melissa Okabe
Passage au crible n°54
Flick
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashstiani death sentence for alleged adultery proves symbolic of the violation of human rights and the situation of the women under sharia law which rages in Iran. The affair mobilized international opinion since 2010, which allowed for the suspension of her stoning sentence. However at the end of December 2011, the announcement of the switching of punishment from stoning to hanging restarted the world protest campaign for the liberation of Sakineh.
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Sakineh was born in 1967, in Iranian Azerbaijan, in the northwest of the country. She was a teacher in the nursery school in her city but only speaks Azeri and does not understand Persian, the official language of Iran. In 2006, she was sentenced to death for complicity in the murder of her husband and for « illicit relations » with a man. Accusations for the first crime were not confirmed and were put in the background, whereas the attention focused on adultery, liable to the death penalty by stoning. Her imminent execution was announced in June 2010. She was already subjected to 99 statutory lashes, even when she was considered innocent, and Sakineh ended up signing a death sentence drawn up in a language which she did not understand. She was then forced to broadcast confessions, just before her son and her lawyer were stopped with both German journalists who had produced the interview. As for her first lawyer, he had to flee the country, the repression of the regime beating down on his wife.
A wave of indignation on an international scale immediately took shape with demonstrations, which were held in particular in more than 100 cities of the world. Petitions and condemnations of Iran by international authorities for non-compliance with Human Rights multiplied. Protests also emanated from the cultural universe and from political leaders (The president of Brazil, Lula, precisely suggested to grant asylum to Sakineh, the request being rejected by Teheran’s authorities). This set of interventions ended in the suspension of a judgment considered « barbarian ». But at the end of 2011, Malek Adjar Sharifi – head of justice in Oriental Azerbaijan where Sakineh was detained for seven years – suggested that death by hanging could be substituted for stoning. A new global mobilization immediately began. A few days later, the head of justice backtracked and declared that his comments had been truncated. The fate of Sakineh is not yet fixed, and as such, thus arouses constant international vigilance.
1- The respect for human rights. Iran refutes the international conception of Human Rights, as being a simple western invention. The current government displays cultural relativism by which it intends to deny the idea of universal values. Here it sees a weapon against Islam, the Koran containing, according to the Iranian leaders, all the fundamental rights for fourteen centuries, well before their deceptive development in West. According to the 20th principle of the Constitution « All members of the Nation, women and men, are under the protection of the Law and enjoy all human, political, economic, social and cultural rights » but with this precision: « in respect for the rules of Islam », that is, in a certain interpretation of sharia law. So stoning, like other violations of human rights in this country (censorship, torture, amputations…) is legalized in articles 102 and 104 of the Iranian penal code which describes execution in great detail: stones should not « be big to the point that the condemned person dies having received one or two thrown at them; they should not be too small that we cannot give them the name of being stones either ». They will have to be very sharp to make one bleed. Humiliation is added to the suffering imposed by this savage practice because killing has to take place in public just as with the whippings where, in the case of Sakineh, her then 16-year-old son, was forced to attend the lashing sessions.
2 – Inequality between the sexes. Under the guise of equality, inequality is in fact institutionalized. The 21th principle of the Constitution specifies that « The State has to guarantee women rights in all points of view » with the same limitation: « in respect for the Islamic rules » which, actually, place women under guardianship. For example, it is made obligatory for women to ask for the authorization of their husbands to go out of the home, travel or work. Moreover, clothing obligations are imposed on them and they undergo discriminations in civil and family rights (disparities in front of divorce or inheritance procedures, etc.), the law forbidding them the right of abortion.
However, the situation of women in Iran remains rather paradoxical. Indeed they enjoy more liberties than women in the other Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain), in particular in higher education (60 % of girls are in universities), in employment or in sports…. On the other hand, they do not remain passive, and they group themselves in organizations. In this respect, the lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003, remains symbolic of this fight for human rights.
Heroine despite herself, Sakineh appears as the symbol of these women who, in Iran, are victims of stoning. But, beyond this country, she shows the oppression of all those who suffer under the influence of sharia law. So, at the end of 2011, one woman was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for « witchcraft », in terms of an « Islamically correct » judgment. Moreover, the euphoria and the hopes aroused by the Arab Spring, henceforth leave a space filled with a certain anxiety after elections which granted the majority to Islamic parties, even if these call themselves « moderate » (Tunisia, Egypt or Morocco). Especially since, for its part, the National Transitional Council of Libya hurried to announce, after the liberation of the country, its will to restore sharia law.
However, sadly radical Islam has no monopoly on this organization of male ascendancy. We also find it in the other religious fundamentalisms. The ultra-orthodox Jews, « the black men », did they not recently demonstrate in Israel, among others, for the establishment of segregation of the sexes in public places? Certain Protestant communities or Catholic groups led, for their part, commando squads against private hospitals practicing the termination of pregnancy. Lastly, even non-religious, contemporary societies, even today, display a more or less pronounced disparity between the sexes. In other words, this « differential valency of the sexes » to the advantage of men, that anthropologist Françoise Héritier detected in all times and in all places, does not spare the West either.
As in the Arab revolutions and other recent situations, the role of media, in particular the internet, was fundamental in the Sakineh affair. The immediate and large-scale reaction of public opinion, put pressure on political leaders of numerous countries like in international instances – both finding themselves obliged to take a stand – and on Teheran’s authorities. Today, international solidarity does not weaken and what citizens of the world demand, is not only the ban on Sakineh’s death sentence but her release into freedom. Beyond her case, they demand purely and simply the abolition of stoning, of which there will always be other individual victims, and for which Iran had nevertheless announced a moratorium in 2002.
http://laregledujeu.org/2011/12/29/8385/sakineh%C2%A0-les-dernieres-et-tristes-nouvelles-de-l%E2%80%99iranienne/
Stengers Lauriane, Pierres non seulement – Conversations avec Sakineh Mohammadi Ashstiani, Editions BoD, 2010
Voir les sites d’Amnesty International et Human Rights Watch
