100 Cities Against Stoning

SKY

Tim Marshall

This weekend's global protests, against the stoning to death of people, may not attract mass gatherings, but the numbers will be swelled by the recent publicity surrounding the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in Iran. The 43-year-old Iranian mother of two was sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery in a case where little evidence was presented but the judge took it upon himself to know facts about the case even where none existed.

After an international outcry the sentence may have been changed to death by hanging, but this is unclear, and the fact remains that Mrs Ashtiani is facing death. The French and British governments have led the charge in condeming the sentence and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouncher is now calling on all 27 EU states to send a joint letter to Tehran threatening economic sanctions if the sentence is carried out whether by stoning or hanging.

In some ways this is raising the stakes and backing Iran into a corner, but without international pressure it is fairly sure Mrs Ashtiani will die. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has begun a petition to save her which has already been signed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni, and former President Chirac and D'Estaing. The Czeck writer Milan Kundera has signed as have Bob Geldof, Mia Farrow and Juliette Bioche.

The campaign against stoning predates this latest outrage and will outlast it. This weekend there will be rallies around the world to protest against the practice but sadly not in many Muslim dominated countries. In the Middle East the only states where people are participating are Iraq and Israel. There will also be a gathering in Turkey.

There are no rallies planned in the countries where stoning is carried out, these include, with or without legal sanction, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, UAE, Acheh province of Indonesia and Afghanistan.

The 'legal' rules surrounding stoning are quite precise. These include the depth to which a person must be buried before stoning, and the size of stones to be used.

Why so little activity against this practice in the places where it takes place? There are a number of possibilities: Support for stoning is higher in the places where such things happen, especially amongst men. In some areas it would simply be too dangerous to organize such a protest either because of a dictatorial government, or dictatorial local men.

Frequently the poverty of such places militatesagainst civic action of the type we take for granted in advanced democracies. I remember asking a Serb friend in the 1990's about the state of 'animal and gay rights ' in Serbia. He smiled pityingly and said 'When we sort out staying alive and basic human rights in this place we might have the luxury of moving on to animals'.

A few years later, after the wars were over, I covered a Gay Pride rally in Belgrade which was smashed off the streets as the police encouraged the thugs beating those taking part. Happily a more recent attempt at demonstrating passed off with little incident -Serbs have caught up with a different way of thinking. Others have not .

Civil dialogue in some parts of the world is not played out in the newspapers, or in TV debates nor in civilized town hall debates. There is little civil space within which to start a pressure group, especially if those you want to pressure are men with guns. It is instructive that of the two Muslim dominated countries where some sort of protests may take part this weekend, both are relatively industrialized and have forms of democracy. The locations of the demonstrations are in their biggest cities, Baghdad and Istanbul.

I'm not arguing that Baghdad is a bastion of human rights - homosexuals there are still being murdered by the militias - but what has sprung up in Iraq is a form of free media which has in turn begun to debate issues suppressed during the Saddam years.

However, that is the capital - move a few miles outside, and there would be no chance of organizing anything along the lines of 100 Cities Against Stoning. I was in Kerbala in Iraq a few days after Saddams statsue had come down in 2003 and I outraged some local men by talking with a young woman in a Burhka who told me of her hope to start a womens movement in the city but how she was intimidated. The outrage was because, although I spoke with her in public, and did not touch her, the fact that I was not a relative but had still dared to speak with her was enough for some men to want to attack both of us. They don't stone people to death in Kerbala, nor do they allow demonstrations against it.