Middle East
IRAN: Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh sentenced to 2 ½ years in jail and 30 lashes for 'acts against national security'
The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) International Solidarity Network and the Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women (SKSW) are deeply concerned by the sentencing meted out to our colleague and friend, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, in May by the Iranian Revolutionary Court for exercising her constitutional right to peaceful assembly.
IRAN: Imprisoned activist Shiva Nazar Ahari to go on trial for 'acts against national security'
In March 2010, Women’s human rights defender and WLUML council member, Shadi Sadr, took the extraordinary step of to Shiva Nazar Ahari, a young human rights activist and a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), currently imprisoned in Iran for ‘acts against national security’.
Egypt renews crackdown on female mutilation
There are giggles and shouts as little children play boisterously in the dusty street by the Hadad family home in the village of Abu Nashaba.
Just inside the front door, however, a mother dressed in black is sitting on the floor weeping silently. It is less than a month since the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Nermeen.
The girl died in a nearby health clinic and was buried without a permit from the local authorities.
Jordan marriage law challenged
Rights activists call for scrapping a law allowing early marriage for girls
'Carla Bruni is a prostitute', says Iranian newspaper
An Iranian newspaper has called Carla Bruni, France's first lady, a "prostitute" after she attacked Iran's plan to stone a woman to death.
Crime (Sex) and Punishment (Stoning)
It may be the oldest form of execution in the world, and it is certainly among the most barbaric.
IRAN: Prosecutor urges tighter checks for women's Islamic dress code
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's prosecutor called on Sunday for tighter checks on women who fail to observe Islamic dress code in public, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Under Iran's Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.
"Unfortunately the law ... which considers violation of the Islamic dress code as a punishable crime, has not been implemented in the country in the past 15 years," said general prosecutor Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.
"Under the law, violators of public chastity should be punished by being sentenced to up to two months in jail or 74 lashes."
A Statement of Concern Regarding the Televised ‘Confession’ by Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) International Solidarity Network deplore the staging of a ‘public confession’ on Iranian television by Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, who is awaiting execution in Iran by stoning for adultery.
The ‘confession’, done in an interview format, was broadcast on Wednesday 11th August on the '20:30' television program by Seda va Sima, the government broadcasting station. The ‘confession’, showed Sakineh implicating herself in the murder of her husband. However, as we have noted, Sakineh speaks Azeri (a Turkic language) but the interviewer narrated and spoke in Farsi drowning out Sakineh’s voice in her own language.
AFGHANISTAN: Stop stoning and other forms of cruel punishments by the Taliban
The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) International Solidarity Network condemn the recent incidents of violent punishments by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
On Sunday 15 August, a couple in their twenties were publicly executed by stoning by the Taliban in a village controlled by their forces in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan.The couple had eloped to Pakistan, although they were reportedly engaged to other people, but later returned to their village of Mullah Qulli in the Archi district of Kunduz. Some reports indicate that their families had agreed to marry them, while others conclude that a jirga had ruled they would be pardoned if the accused male paid compensation. However, the Taliban arrested and stoned to death the two young people in a bazaar of Dasht-e Archi district on the accusation of committing an act of adultery, as confirmed by Mohammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz.
Egypt play seeks to smash social taboos
CAIRO — He wants to have phone sex, she wants to leave her house without a headscarf: a Cairo play seeks to confront Egypt's social taboos by laying bare the sexual frustrations and harassments that beset daily life.