Iran Urged to Stop Stoning People to Death
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
January 15, 2008
Human rights activists are demanding that Iran abolish its practice of stoning people to death.  A new report, published Monday, comes as nine Iranian women and two Iranian men are now awaiting that "cruel and unusual" fate, Amnesty International said. AI calls stoning a "grotesque and unacceptable penalty" that should be halted immediately.
The head of Iran's judiciary in 2002 issued a moratorium on stoning, and the country's Penal Code is due to be amended, Amnesty International said. But the moratorium on stoning is not always observed. Amnesty International said it welcomes Iran's recent "advances toward reforms," said Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA executive director. But Cox also called on the Iranian government to ensure that the new Penal Code does not allow stoning to death or other means of execution for adultery.
Iran's current Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning. According to Amnesty International, Article 102 of Iran's Penal Code says that men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for before the stoning begins.
Article 104, which refers to the penalty for adultery, says the stones used should be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill the victim immediately.
Amnesty International noted that "serious failings" in Iran's justice system "commonly result in unfair trials," and that includes capital cases.
"Despite the moratorium imposed in 2002 and official denials that stoning sentences continued to be implemented in Iran, deaths by stoning have been reported," AI said Monday in new release publicizing its new report.
The group mentions one man, Ja'far Kiani, who was stoned to death on July 5, 2007 after being convicted of committing adultery with a woman who bore him two children and who was also sentenced to death by stoning. The stoning was carried out despite a stay of execution ordered in his case and in defiance of the 2002 moratorium, AI said. Another couple is "known to have been stoned to death" in May 2006, AI said. And more Iranians await such a fate.

Women most affected
Amnesty International said most of the Iranians sentenced to death by stoning are women, who are "not treated equally before the law and the courts." Amnesty International said Iranian women are more likely than men to be illiterate -- and that makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit.
"Discrimination against women in other aspects of their lives also leaves them more susceptible to conviction for adultery," Amnesty International said. Amnesty International said there is reason to hope that death by stoning will be completely abolished in Iran in the future.
It noted the "courageous efforts" of local human rights defenders in Iran who launched a "Stop Stoning Forever" campaign in May 2006. The campaign is credited with saving four women and one man, and a fifth woman has had her stoning sentence temporarily stayed, AI said.
"The Iranian government should pay attention to its civil society activists who are working courageously to end stoning," said Elise Auerbach, Amnesty International USA Iran country specialist. But the activists are often harassed, arrested or otherwise intimidated by Iranian authorities, AI said. Amnesty International says that human rights defenders in Iran believe that international publicity and pressure can help bring about change in the country.
Iran is not the only country where harsh Islamic law has drawn international criticism. Last year, the Saudi government was blasted internationally when a 19-year-old woman, a gang rape victim, was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for violating a law that forbids unrelated men and women from meeting in private. As Cybercast News Service reported, the Saudi government was forced to issue a statement defending the court decision.

West should tackle Iran's ruthless rulers

By Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen is a Labour member of Britain's House of Lords

The Middle East Times

January 17, 2008
Throughout recent years the Iranian regime and its activities in relation to terrorism and nuclear weapons have caused frenzy across not only the political world, but also the media. However, the evil nature of this regime should not be anything new. Anyone who has looked into the actions of this regime from the 1979 Revolution to this current day will know that this regime is evil from head to toe, having run a 28-year campaign of violence, murder and destruction against Iran's people.
In fact, human rights violations inside Iran have reached a horrifically shocking level. Within the last two weeks alone we have seen three people hanged on Jan. 10 with five further individuals having hands and legs amputated on Jan. 7. These crimes occur alongside stoning to death, public lashings, the gouging out of eyes and over 170 other forms of torture that this regime commits in its notorious prisons. These are the truths that lie behind Iran's borders and it is critical that such victims are not forgotten. Not only must they not be forgotten, in fact they must be looked to as the solution, because it has always been those demanding democracy and freedom in Iran that are the first to end up hanging from cranes in Iran's city centers.
Amnesty International recently spoke out against stoning to death in Iran. In their statement they also addressed the issue of women's rights. As an individual who has dedicated a great deal of my time to publicize equal rights in the U.K., I cannot place enough emphasis on how significant such support for women's rights in Iran truly is.
Another major issue that needs much greater publicizing is the horrendous number of street children in Iran. In such an oil rich state, it is truly shocking that so many children in Iran live in the gutters of Iran's cities, without the food or shelter needed to even live the most basic of lives. This in conjunction with Iran still executing individuals under the age of 18 leaves the children of Iran living a hard-hitting and dangerous life.
These human rights abuses and the nature and shape of this regime today can be traced back to Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini viewed human rights abuses as the tool to maintain his rule and that of his regime. However, Khomeini needed to sell such abuses as necessity to his mercenaries and for this he used the one tool he knew would succeed above all, religion. Through the creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, recently designated a terrorist organization by the United States, he created a force not only to carry out such abuses at home, but to spread the Islamic fundamentalism created by himself to the wider Middle East, a fundamentalism which has no essence of the true Islam that is practiced by so many.
It is today that the IRGC can be seen to be spreading this ideology, an ideology which has one consequence, bloodshed. This bloodshed is now visible from the streets of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine to those of Pakistan. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan was an all too vivid portrayal of what we now face to achieve peace in that region. In Iraq the Iranian regime's funding and supplying of weaponry to Iraqi insurgents has caused the death of British and coalition troops as well those of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. These as well as Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas are creating an atmosphere of Islamic fundamentalism, which coupled with Iran's nuclear weapons program acts as the greatest threat to world peace as we know it.
To achieve success in this fight against Islamic fundamentalism, we must cut it at its source, Tehran. Islamic fundamentalism began with the creation of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime and will end with its downfall. However, support for change in Iran does not mean support for any external intervention in the country. War simply is not an option that should be contemplated. However, nor is it acceptable for the current climate to continue. Supporters of further dialogue with Iran wish us to believe there are moderates in Iran willing to change. This is a wholly mistaken view of the entire basis of this regime.
It is however on this basis that the U.K. government has based its entire foreign policy toward Iran. It has been an ill advised policy of appeasement, which has allowed the regime to continue its human rights abuses, to continue its support for terrorism and to continue unabated in its attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. Furthermore, this policy was the root cause of the terror listing of Iran's democratic opposition, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran in 2002.
Many British parliamentarians felt this terror tag to be absolutely unjust and a shameful act against an organization dedicated to bringing democracy to Iran. Fuelled by this injustice and the government's steadfastness in appeasing Tehran, 35 MPs and peers, including myself took the British Parliament to court. On Nov. 30 of last year the Proscribed Organizations Appeals Commission ruled conclusively in our favor, indicating that the decision of the government was "perverse" and "flawed" while ordering it to remove the PMOI from its terrorism list. Furthermore, POAC went on to reject the government's leave to appeal.
This victory occurs on the back of an unprecedented decision at the European Court of First Instance in December 2006. The CIF ruled the terror listing of the PMOI in the European Union as illegal and ordered it annulled. However, after more than a year the PMOI still remains on the EU list, an act which is in direct defiance of the CFI ruling. Dick Marty, a Swiss investigator working for the human rights body of the Council of Europe who conducted an investigation into the terror list, in reference to the PMOI case said, "it remains almost impossible, in practice, to be removed from the blacklist -- a situation that is illegal and unacceptable."
The PMOI must now be removed from both terror lists immediately. The PMOI offers a solution which can bring change to Iran, where a flourishing democracy will lead to the spread of democracy throughout the region and an end to Islamic fundamentalism. The PMOI a member group of the National Council of Resistance of Iran has 1,000 female members with women in control of the entire leadership council. In fact the NCRI, of which the PMOI is a member organization, is lead by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. Rajavi acts as a ray of hope for the people of Iran and the people of the entire region. Through support for Rajavi and her third option advocating democratic change by Iranians for Iranians we can not only avert a further war in the region, but we can finally begin to lay the seeds of democracy for Iran and the wider region.

Iran: Nightmares Of Evin Haunt Freed Filmmaker
By Toumaj Tahbaz

RFE/RL
January 22, 2008
Night after night, from her cell in solitary confinement, Mehrnoushe Solouki could hear the anguished crying of fellow inmates in Tehran's Evin prison. When the French-Iranian filmmaker asked her guards about it, they were clear: The cries were not from hardened criminals but female activists, artists, and intellectuals locked up for nothing more than their political beliefs.
Since January 18, Solouki has been back in Paris, safe in the warm embrace of family and friends -- and far from Evin prison. Yet it still haunts her. A doctoral film student at Canada’s University of Quebec, Solouki traveled to Tehran in late 2006 to research a documentary about the burial rites of Iran’s religious minorities. But when she accidentally stumbled upon a mass grave of regime opponents summarily executed in 1988, she was quickly thrown in prison. It was February 19, 2007.
"I was leaving the office of my colleague when five plainclothes agents, who seemed to be armed, stopped me," Solouki says. "From that moment on, my life totally changed."
Solouki went on to spend a month at Evin in solitary confinement, before her release on a bail of 85,000 euros ($124,000) posted by her parents in France, at the risk of losing their own house.
But authorities had confiscated the 39-year-old filmmaker's passport. Unable to leave, she waited months for her trial in November on charges that included making antigovernment propaganda and endangering national security. At the trial, she was fined around $2,000 for her activities.
The French Foreign Ministry has not provided any details about her case. But a website set up by supporters (freesolouki.org) claims she was acquitted last week and allowed to leave Iran.
'So Many Students, Intellectuals, And Activists'
In July, an unknown assailant in Tehran attacked Solouki. Her facial injuries required four separate operations. But while still in pain from the surgeries, she tells Radio Farda that what's most haunting now are the memories of her imprisonment.
"I heard the cries and yelling of other women prisoners," she says. "I thought that they were terrorists, but when I asked about it, the answer was that they were women activists arrested during the ceremony of March 8 [International Women's Day]. I couldn't tell whether this answer was tragic or comic."
But tragic seems to best describe Evin, which includes a much-feared wing that is thought to be run by Iran's secret services. In recent months, the prison's ranks have swelled with students, women's rights activists, journalists, and others amid a fierce crackdown on dissent by the Iranian government.
"I have heard some things about Guantanamo Bay -- that terrorists are kept there," Solouki says. "But I can’t believe there could be a place in the world with so many students, intellectuals, writers, and women's rights activists [as Evin prison]."
Solouki has always denied the charges against her, saying that her documentary had not yet been filmed at the time of her arrest and that none of the equipment seized from her gave any indication of the film's content.
She was granted a research license by the Iranian Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance to film a documentary on the burial traditions of religious-minority communities such as Armenian Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. She says the authorities had prior knowledge of her planned activities, such as the locations where she wanted to film, including a particular cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran.
Not just any cemetery, however. Solouki, in doing her research, was suddenly captivated by an area at the Khavaran Cemetery. She describes it as "totally different" from the other areas where she had been filming. That's because the cemetery reportedly contains a mass grave of regime opponents executed in the summer and fall of 1988.
How many people were buried there has never been established. However, estimates generally point to more than 2,800 killed, with their bodies buried in different areas around the country, not just at Khavaran Cemetery. Most were opposition leftists and mujahedin members taken from jail and summarily executed. Solouki says authorities may have believed that she intended to make a film critical of the executions.
"When I came across that reality, I couldn't turn off my camera," she says. "This is apparently part of Iran's history, but later I had a talk with professor Aghajari, who teaches at the Tarbiat Modaress University. He said, 'No, this is not part of Iran's history, and this has not entered Iran's history.'"
Solouki says the academic "even warned me that anyone who researched that part of Iran's past -- not history -- would be persecuted, because it is likely that bringing up this case, the Khavaran case -- would take Iran and those in power who were involved to international courts."
During her ordeal, Solouki says she often felt her life to be endangered, and even briefly sought refuge at the French Embassy in Tehran. But in the end, she was fortunate.
Unlike Zahra Kazemi, a 54-year-old Iranian-Canadian photographer who was beaten to death at Ervin prison in 2003, Solouki has survived. Now, she plans to make a film about her story, to tell the world about what she endured inside Evin prison -- and what scores of dissidents continue to suffer there daily.
 

The Silence of the Progressives is Deafening
By Jila Kazerounian Executive Director of WFAFI
American Chronicle

February 05, 2008
The news media report that Iran will be stoning to death two sisters convicted of adultery. The verdicts against the two sisters, Zohreh Kabiri (27) and Azar Kabiri (28) were confirmed by the 23rd branch of the Supreme Court in Iran. The sisters had already been tried and already received 99 lashes on charges of adultery. Shockingly, this was basically their second trial. In addition, a 49-year old music teacher by the name of Abdullah Farivar in Sari, Northern Iran has also been sentenced to death by stoning within a week of the two sisters.
According to the penal code of the theocratic regime in Iran, the punishment for adultery is stoning to death. The stones should be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill the victims instantly. The executioners bury women up to their necks and men up to their waist in the ground and have the public throw stones at them. If the victims escape, they are free to go. What are the chances for women to free themselves from this savage act when they are buried in the ground up to their neck?! None. The misogynist regime discriminates against women even in stoning them to death.
Currently there are nine women and two men awaiting the brutal punishment of stoning in Iran. There are also 9 teenagers in Gohardasht prison in Karaj waiting to be executed. Public hangings are familiar scene in the streets of Iranian cities these days. The Mullahs in Iran have no mercy. Their brutal treatment of Iranian people, and in particular those who dare to speak out or stand up against their medieval and discriminatory laws, is outrageous.
And in response to this barbarism, the silence of the Progressives in the west is deafening. They will go out of their ways to appease the dictators in Tehran, as if engaging a bunch of religious despots is the new sign of open-mindedness. They are ready to talk to the Mullahs with no pre-conditions!! Isn't that heart-warming? No pre-conditions!! Not even requiring them to show minimal respect for the most basic human rights of their citizens. It is utterly sad to see the progressives who should stand alongside the people, so easily forget the oppressed masses and silently recognize their oppressors. It is very disturbing to watch them turn a blind eye to these executions and massacres by the fundamentalist regime ruling Iran. After all, progressives claim to be the voices of conscience and humanity; do they not? In the short run, they are not the ones who would pay for their own appeasement and conciliatory policy towards the clerical regime. Iranian people are the victims of the twisted policy of "watching the mullahs´ ruthlessness and turning your face away". Iranian women are the ones suffering the brunt of it, as the second class citizens in a society that treats them so harshly.
Every day, the Iranian women, students, teachers and workers are protesting against the violations of their rights that are violently suppressed. They get arrested, detained and tortured. But, they do not give up until they rid themselves from dictators ruling their land. And as the Great Civil Rights leader of this land, Dr. Martin Luther King said: "In the end, they will remember not the words of their enemies but the silence of their friends".
At the end, I would like to pose a question: What would you have done if these brutalities happened in your country, especially under the name of god and religion? Would you still sit down at the same table and negotiate in good faith with the savage murderers of your people? What would you say to stoning and daily public hangings in the streets of Washington, New York, London or Paris?
Would you still keep silent and talk unconditionally to the executioners????
I doubt it…..