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strong>July 11, p. 8

This Monday, as in previous years, there are expected to be worldwide protests against the sentence of stoning decreed against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in Iran.

Sakineh has been accused of murdering her husband without a shred of evidence, and the case has never been proved in court. She has been sentenced to be stoned for adultery, purely on the “special knowledge” of a judge.

Her execution has been held off only because of the weight of international pressure. She has had confessions extracted from her on television, and now awaits a decision on her sentence. In the meantime, she remains in prison. (By Rafiq Mahmood, Bogor, West Java)

Your comments:

Stoning is inhumane and belongs to the past of human culture. It is simply unacceptable in this day and age.

The root problem lies in the fact that women in these cultures are simply discriminated against. If a woman is accused of having an illicit sex with a man who is not her husband, she is to be punished very severely. The man practically gets away with the sex, whether or not it was consensual.

To get any hearing in the court in these lands, a woman who claims to have been raped must be able to present four male eyewitnesses.

We all know that rapes do not occur in the shopping mall. Thus the fate of the poor women, the victims, is sealed.

If the rape victim falls pregnant she is liable to being accused of having illicit sex. How will women in those lands ever have justice?

Paul E. Rantau
Singapore