Language
Campaign
Turkish women organizations support signature campaign for Iranian Melek
Ghorbany who was sentenced last month to be "publicly stoned to death" and
will gather at Iranian consulate in Istanbul this Saturday to read out press
statement.
Turkish women organizations have joined in the growing international
campaign for Iranian woman prisoner Melek Ghorbany who was sentenced by a
court in her country last month to be publicly stoned to death according to
Islamic Shariah law.
Ghorbany was sentenced to death on June 28, by a court in the northwest
Iranian city of Urmia after being found guilty of committing "adultery."
Representatives of women organizations in Istanbul will meet in front of the
Iranian consulate building this Saturday to read out a press statement
expected to condemn recm, the practice of public stoning.
A statement made in advance of the event said the organizations regarded
public stoning as a crime against humanity and that they would effort for
the Iranian regime to end this form of punishment.
The organizations will also call on all other punishments passed under
Islamic Shariah law to be abolished in Iran and everyone sentenced to
stoning to death, including Gharbany herself, to be released.
The campaign to stop the execution of Ghorbany was originally launched a
week ago by her American lawyer Lily Mazahery who has so far collected
nearly 2,000 signatures and is hoping to collect far more.
Iran's Penal Code not only allows for a married woman found guilty of
adultery to be stoned to death but also describes how the stoning should be
conducted and with what kind of stones.
Women to be stoned have their hands tied behind their back and are covered
>from head to toe in winding sheets before being placed seated in a pit. The
pit is then filled up to their chest with dirt and the dirt is tamped down
before the stoning begins.
In the public stoning of men, they are buried only to the hips before the
stoning commences.