Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Stop Stoning Now

Note: I waited to post this until I had confirmation. Sadly, the reported stoning really happened.

Every day that I was in Iran, an Iranian asked me this question: "Do they think we are terrorists in America?"

I would answer, "Yes."

I know that no country is perfect, believe me. But as long as the Iranian government sanctions slow death by hanging and stoning, the world will think that you are a brutal people. It's time for the Iranian establishment to denounce brutal executions and to make them illegal.

Which gets me to my point: sadly it seems a man was stoned to death by the Qazvin police. His crime? Living with a woman in an unrecognized marriage.

Read about it here:

Stoning WAS carried out in Iran

Global Voices

Women's Field

Iran confirms

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've posted about this on two blogs, getting the word out.

Anonymous said...

also i'm agree with you in baisis
and it is not acceptable to stone someone for any thing(also hanging is not not proper for most of the crime) but in this isue the man and woman have husband and wife before their sexiual relationship
and these kind of thing is banned in islam so as u see it's because of islamic laws not because of iranian brutal

Unknown said...

Anonymous, I do not think Iranians are brutal: quite the opposite. What I do think is that the system is brutal. I know that stonings shock most Iranians too. The problem in Iran is that each judge is a law of his own. To combat this I argue that the Iranian judiciary must put a complete stop to all stonings and slow hangings and immediate executions. Until that happens, Iran will continue to have renegade judges who hang young girls (Neka... remember?) and stone married men for adultery.

Stoning is an unbelievably brutal form of execution no matter which law is broken.

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