WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN IRAN – Zeinab Sekaanvand was 17 when her husband died. Iranian police arrested her for his murder. Now she is 22 and she faces execution by hanging after undergoing a trial that many international organizations consider unfair. The punishment was suspended because Zeinab got pregnant in prison. However, due to a miscarriage she lost the baby this year and the sentence can now be carried out.
When the crime happened she was underage. Iran signed two treaties in the past, the International Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which explicitly forbid the execution of minors.However, Iranian law allows the death penalty for boys from age 15 and for girls from age nine. Girls and women can be sentenced to hanging either in private or in public, or to stoning to death. Under external pressure, minors now tend to be kept in prison until they are 18 and then their execution can take place.
The young Kurdish girl married Hossein Sarmadi at the age of 15, hoping her husband could give her a better life. Instead, he soon started beating her. She repeatedly asked him for a divorce and also went to the police to complain about her abuse but without substantial results. Zeinab claimed that her brother in law, who apparently raped her several times, was responsible for her husband’s death. According to Amnesty International, police officers of the region of West Azerbaijan tortured her to make Zeinab confess the killing.
This young girl is just the last case of unfair convictions against women in the history of Iranian justice and the death penalty. The vast majority of cases examined revolve around the crimes of adultery and murder. In Iran, married people caught committing adultery risk death by stoning or hanging. Under Iranian sharia law, the sentenced individual is buried up to the neck (or to the waist in the case of men), and those attending the public execution are called upon to throw stones. If the convicted person manages to free themselves from the hole, the death sentence is commuted.
On August 15, 2004, Atefeh Rajabi was hanged in public in the town of Neka. Atefeh was 16 and her charges consisted of adultery and “crimes against chastity”. Atefeh was arrested for having a relationship with a 51-years-old taxi driver, a married man with children. The man abused her for all the period their affair lasted. In this case too, police tortured her to extort her confession.
Atefeh stood trial without legal representation. She couldn’t afford a lawyer and none was provided by the state. According to Iranian law, it’s mandatory for the accused to be assisted by an attorney, whether or not he can afford one. This opportunity wasn’t given to to Atefeh and she had to defend herself in front of religious judges. The girl soon realized she couldn’t win so she took off her veil during a session as act of protest. She also took off her shoes and threw them at the judges. As far as she was concerned, she was the victim, and the perpetrators of the rape should have been prosecuted instead.
However, she was sentenced to death. Atefeh appealed to the court, but the clerics intended to teach her a lesson. The judge in her case, Haji Rezai, also acted as executioner and applied the noose himself.
In May 2006, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was sentenced to receive 99 lashes, after being found guilty of adultery. In September of the same year, her case was reopened. The prosecutors investigated her involvement in her husband death. The woman risked a death sentence and only an international campaign mounted by media and human rights organizations helped her to avoid it. She was finally released in March 2014.
In Iran, rape and adultery very often go together. For women is difficult to prove the crime and many times their rapists can get away with it. Chauvinist Iranian society tends to consider women responsible for what happens to them. If rape is proved , the rapist can be sentenced to death.The penal code, which is based on Iranian interpretations of Islamic law, states that if a woman injures or kills a rapist in self-defense, she will not be prosecuted. However, the woman must demonstrate that her defence was equal to the danger she faced and that it was her last resort.
Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged in October 2014. She was convicted for murdering a man she accused of trying to rape her. The authorities never believed her story and sustained that her action was premeditated and not in self-defence as she claimed. Many human rights organizations condemned the execution and defined the trial as “deeply flawed”.
The Iranian authorities have long been accused of using brutal and unfair methods, despite their pledge to meet all treaties on human rights. The country is still at the top of the ranking for death sentences and violations of human rights and unfair trials. International public opinion has repeatedly criticized the way the Iranian courts and the prosecutors deal with cases involving women, and their lack of impartiality. The United Nations condemned Iran’s record on public executions, floggings, arbitrary sentences, torture and discrimination against women in a resolution in December 2004.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN IRAN – Zeinab Sekaanvand was 17 when her husband died. Iranian police arrested her for his murder. Now she is 22 and she faces execution by hanging after undergoing a trial that many international organizations consider unfair. The punishment was suspended because Zeinab got pregnant in prison. However, due to a miscarriage she lost the baby this year and the sentence can now be carried out.
