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Bulletin # 178
27 September 2008
www.rationalistinternational.netContents:
Richard Dawkins' website blocked by court in Turkey
"The stoning of Soraya M."
Indian godmen under the scanner: Asaram Bapu
Joseph Edamaruku Memorial
Henry Morgentaler named to the Order of Canada
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"The stoning of Soraya M."
Film director Cyrus Nowrasteh / Stills of the film
At the Toronto International Film Festival this September, the debut of Cyrus Nowrasteh's film "The Stoning of Soraya M.", based on a true story, confronted the audience with all the gruesome and horrifying details of a barbarian ritual that is still being executed in today's Iran.
Oficially there is no stoning in Iran after the head of judiciary, Ayatollah Mohmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, ordered under pressure of international protest a moratorium on stoning in 2002. But still there have been several people stoned to death since then. In July 2007, the case of Jafar Kiani, stoned to death in Qazvin (north east Iran), caused an international outcry. In May 2006, Abbas H and Mahbubeh A were stoned to death in Mashhad (north east Iran). In 2007, the Islamic Supreme Court of Iran upheld several death sentences by stoning. In January 2008, Amnesty International called for Iran to abolish the stoning execution. At that time at least nine people, sentenced to death by stoning, were waiting for their execution. Strong protest from Iran and abroad during the next months pressed for the sentences to be commuted - but it is not yet clear if the victims are really saved. Meantime the National Council of Resistance of Iran and human rights organisations report about the cases of Gilan Mohammadi, a 30-year-old woman, and the Afghan national Gholamali Eskandari, both sentenced to death by stoning and awaiting their sentences to be carried out in Isfahan prison central Iran.
"The stoning of Soraya M" happened some twenty years ago and was described in 1990 by the French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahejan in his book with the same title. It is the story of a young woman, mother of nine children, who is wrongly accused of adultery by her husband Ali, because he wants to get rid of her to marry a very young girl offered to him. Suddenly the innocent and helpless Soraya is an outcast, stripped of basic human rights, marked like a sacrificial animal to become the object of a gory and blood thirsty ritual that unites the conspiring male communify of the village in destruction of the evil that she now seems to represent. The film rolls slowly from detail to detail: stones are collected - not too big, as they should not kill fast, her body is ritually washed, wrapped in a white shroud and carried on a stretcher to the stoning ground, her hands tied behind her back. There she is buried up to the armpits - and the marcabre ritual unfolds. Her two sons are forced to abjure her and join the stone throwers.
The film is made by people who have personal experience with the fear of fundamentalism in power. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh is an Iranian-American whose family had to flee Iran after the revolution. When lead acress Shohreh Aghdashloo, another Iranian-American, once spoke to a reporter in the USA about torture victims in Iran, Iranian police arrested her brother at home and kept him in prison for one year.
Links: Report of the NCRI:
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/5599/1/AI's statement:
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-01/2008-01-15-voa48.cfm?CFID=44707033&CFTOKEN=46282609Stop Stoning Forever campaign in Iran:
http://www.stop-stoning.org/node/25--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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