Your Message Can Stop A Woman Being Stoned To Death

The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women [nb. seasoned readers may know this from previous actions as Women's Field] and the International Solidarity Network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws urge all concerned to immediately contact the Iranian officials to express their concern over the planned stoning to death of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani. On 15 May 2006, Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani was convicted of having an ‘illicit relationship’ with two men and was sentenced to 99 lashes by Branch 101 of the Criminal Court of Osku, in East Azerbaijan Province. Then, in a September 2006 trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, Mohammadi-Ashtiani was once again accused of committing ‘fornication while married’. During this trial, Mohammadi-Ashtiani retracted the ‘confession’ she supposedly made during pre-trial interrogation, alleging that she had been coerced to confess under duress, and declared her innocence. Two of the five judges found her not guilty, pointing to the lack of evidentiary proof in the case against her, and noting that she had already suffered 99 lashes due to her previous sentencing. Even though double jeopardy is illegal in Iran, the other three judges, including the presiding judge, found Sakineh guilty on the basis of the ‘judge’s intuition’, a provision in Iranian law that allows judges to make their own subjective and arbitrary rulings based on a ‘gut feeling’, even in the absence of clear or conclusive evidence. Mohammadi-Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning on 10 September 2006.

A mother of two young children, Mohammadi-Ashtiani has asked for amnesty from the Judiciary twice, but both times her requests have been denied.

Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaie, states that with all the complexities and confusion over her case, his client should not be executed, let alone stoned to death, and that her repentance is enough to warrant a pardon. Mostafaie has pleaded the Head of the Judiciary, Head of the Provincial Judiciary and members of the Amnesty Body to commute Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s sentence to one that enables her to return to her life and children. In previous cases, Ayatollah Shahroudi, the former Head of the Judiciary in Iran, has commuted stoning sentences with the approval of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i.

The newly proposed draft of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran contains provisions for annulling stoning sentences when the execution of such a sentence would damage the reputation of the Islamic Republic and lead to the degradation of Islam.

In Iran stoning to death is prescribed as the mode of execution for those convicted of committing the offence of “adultery while being married”. In 2002, the Head of the Judiciary instructed judges to impose a moratorium on stonings. Despite this, at least five men and one woman have been stoned to death since 2002. In January 2009, the Spokesperson for the Judiciary, Ali Reza Jamshidi, confirmed that two executions by stoning had been carried out in December 2008 and said that the directive on the moratorium had no legal weight and that judges could therefore ignore it.

In June, the Legal and Judicial affairs committee of Iran’s parliament (Majles) recommended the removal of a clause permitting stoning from a new version of the Penal Code currently under discussion in the parliament. The law has yet to be passed by the whole Majles, after which it will be passed to the Council of Guardians for approval. The clause allowing the use of stoning could be reinstated at either stage.

So the key updates are-

Her death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court on 27 May 2007. Her case has been sent to the Amnesty and Clemency Commission twice, but her request for clemency was rejected on both occasions.

Sakineh Mohammadi’s lawyer again asked the Amnesty and Clemency Commission to review her case three months ago. It is not known how long this will take, but if rejected she would be at immediate risk of execution by stoning.

**UPDATE: June 23, 2010: SAKINEH HAS ASKED FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO FORGIVE HER, THEY [[[[[REJECTED!!!!]]]]] PLEASE KEEP SIGNING, AND SPREAD THE NEWS ABOUT HER! WE CAN SAVE HER!

The petition is here but far more effective is to send a message to your local Iranian Embassy & direct to the government of Iran (or in the US case where there is none the Iranian interests section hosted by the Pakistan Embassy) as the penal code states ‘ annulling stoning sentences when the execution of such a sentence would damage the reputation of the Islamic Republic and lead to the degradation of Islam’ So the very attention upon the possible stoning will have bearing upon that-

US-
Address:
2209 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007

Tel: (202) 965-4990
Fax: (202) 965-1073

requests@daftar.org

Office Hours:
Monday through Friday

UK- Ambassador Rasoul Movahedian,
Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran
16 Prince´s Gate
London SW7 1PT

Also the UN Ambassador is Mohammad Khazaee, email-
iran@un.int

Iranian embassies around the world find yours here.

WRITE IMMEDIATELY in Persian, Arabic, English or your own language:

  • Urging the authorities not to execute Sakineh Mohammadi;
  • calling on the authorities to order an immediate and effective moratorium on executions by stoning and the use of other forms of execution and cruel and inhuman punishments, including flogging.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE DD/MONTH/YEAR TO:

Head of the Judiciary

Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh / Office of the Head of the Judiciary

Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave., south of Serah-e Jomhouri

Tehran 1316814737, Islamic Republic of Iran

Email: shahroudi@dadgostary-tehran.ir (In the subject line write: FAO Ayatollah Shahroudi)

Salutation: Your Excellency

Head of the Judiciary in East Azerbaijan Province

Hojjatoleslam Malek-Ashtar Sharifi

Office of the Head of the Judiciary in Tabriz

East Azerbaijan

Salutation: Your Excellency

And copies to:

Leader of the Islamic Republic

Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei, The Office of the Supreme Leader

Islamic Republic Street – Shahid Keshvar Doust Street

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Email: via website: http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?p=letter (English)

http://www.leader.ir/langs/fa/index.php?p=letter (Persian)

Salutation: Your Excellency

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date.

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June 25, 2010 | | Tags: , | 4 Comments »

Osborne’s Hate Speech

The convenient thing about power is if you hate someone you don’t have to use direct means to hurt them, you can design systems and structural biases that do the violence for you. Thus the budget expressed rich politicians (Austerity cabinet has 18 millionaires!) hatred of the poor, of the sick, of those who have to rely on benefits because the systemic unemployment created by the ideology of the elite requires millions to be unemployed to provide the necessary ‘flexibility’ of labour. A budget designed to appease finance capital even as it threw manufacturing into the maw of a very possible double dip recession. But it was the hate that was remarkable, a visceral bigotry that informed every tiny adjustment and cut, a hatred that many in the commentariat were oblivious to presumably because they cannot imagine or empathise with ever having to rely on benefits. Even as chattering media opposed the budget and decried the cuts they did not pick up on the prejudice that was being directed towards ‘scroungers’ ‘cheaters’ single parents’ would it be easier to those who cannot understand this if I replaced those with more common terms of bigoted abuse. Negative qualities were assigned en masse to entire socio economic groups to justify them being made even poorer while those who caused the supposed need for austerity emerged unscathed. It not only shifted the financial burden to the poor it shifted the blame, the opprobrium the hatred. It was Shock Doctrine, taking advantage of a crisis real or perceived to enact radical measures demanded by the financial markets and because they were the drivers and benefactors of the crisis blame had to be moved, so hatred must be inculcated for another group and the people misdirected (thanks corporate media!). And the party political voices all had their angle, the Orange Book Lib Dems claimed it was still progressive while not really disagreeing with much the ‘progressive’ Lib Dems picked out tiny fragments of resemblance to policy and trumpeted a small victory (all of 3% victory!), Labour got to pretend it would have done it differently, that their cuts would have been fairer and not a manifestation of hate, but 13 years of New Labour tell you different (Hey Field, Hutton). It’s all talk, there is no solution to the structural violence agains the poor and sick from any party political elite, once you live on 50 grand or more with an expenses account empathy dies real quick, that’s part of the design. None shied from the narrative of deficit panic and the need for cuts even as economists not having to appease financiers pointed out it was wrong headed.

So it remains to be explained to erstwhile allies that for all the facts, fictions and figures, for all the objections what has not been dealt with is the sheer hatred that has been expressed and now made into real life damaging reality for millions of people. Sympathy and opposition politically is very nice to be sure, but what was loosed upon us yesterday was a determination by the wealthy and powerful to pursue a vendetta against the poor and sick that is timeless.

Am sharing an office with Andrew Holdenby of Reform who is jumping with delight at every benefit cut announced – laughing out loud with delight.
I cannot believe the callousness.

Although in more defined terms has been intensified since the post war era when a country that survived the horrors of WW2 decided it could no longer reward the few and ignore the majority, that the nation had to include all, with a health service, welfare and essential services run for the common good not profit, ever since that insult to selfishness & greed has been resented-

Such sentiments have a whiff of 1930s Germany, something the Twittersphere buzzed with when welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: “Work makes you free” – the same words hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. “I have faced this accusation,” says Professor Lawrence M Mead ”Hitler was non-democratic, whereas work requirements claim a popular mandate. There is something wrong when because of fascism we have to solve every problem with freedom and benefits.”

Now a global elite contend with the cost of labour being the main barrier to increased profit to the accruing of surplus capital demanded by their irrational greed. As long as conditions prevail where someone will work for a peanut and a bowl of piss they cannot see why all should not ask for anymore. Which is where the other shoes waits to drop, what this budget has done is make it very unpleasant to be reliant on benefits if you are sick or raising children, or to be out of work, yet we still have a minimum wage. That is where workfare is going to come in, when that shoe drops the £65 a week benefit will become the new minimum wage. This budget laid the groundwork, workfare will be the next step and then labour will at last be looking at a peanut and a bowl of piss as preferable to prison, except it won’t be called that, how does ‘Workhouse’ sound to you?

But all that is maybe by the by for right now, this week many people got the message loud and clear- You are hated, You and your children are useless eaters, make money for us or be denied your basic human dignity and if we are honest we’d be very happy if you just fucked off and died. Now will those who argue party politics find alliance with the millions under attack and try to understand living day after day with hatred being directed at you or will they keep just arguing their corners ‘No, my tribe Party would have done much better they are the true friend of the people, support us!’ while pretending not to notice all that ever happens when they get in power is a slightly differing style of the same brutal policies.

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June 23, 2010 | | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments »

Help Save Refugee and Migrant Justice

Urgent appeal: 24 Hours to Save Refugee and Migrant Justice

A consortium of charitable trusts and city law firms, supported by Simon Hughes MP, are putting together a proposal to Government to save Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ). The proposal asks the Government to at least pay the money that it would have to pay anyway on insolvency on the understanding that this will be matched with up to £1,000,000 by way of grants, secured loans and donations to meet cash needs to finance work in progress.

We need concrete commitments for these funds today or as early as possible tomorrow – actual cash can come a bit later. So far today, we have been pledged £134,000.  Significantly more could follow from charitable trusts and others we are already talking with.  But at this point it is clear that this is going to be a very considerable challenge without some additional help.

The aim of the plan is to enable, with full transparency and without prejudicing the position of creditors, a 3 month period in which the Government can consider whether it might change the payment system, there might be time to look at some innovative solutions with the Office of Civil Society and banks and RMJ would demonstrate that it had a viable forward business model.  If all that fails, at least it would provide time for an orderly transfer of our clients’ cases.  We have 10,000 clients, including 900 unaccompanied children who may otherwise be left in limbo.

We are appealing for donations, however small, to help save RMJ and secure its services over the next three months. If funds from both Government and other funders can be agreed, RMJ’s administrators would, in principle, support the proposal to take RMJ out of administration.

To make a pledge, or for further information, please telephone Kathleen Commons on 07872 161 271 or email savermj@gmail.com

About Refugee and Migrant Justice

Refugee and Migrant Justice is committed to securing justice for asylum seekers and other migrants in the UK.

We are the largest specialist provider of advice and representation to asylum seekers and other migrants needing protection or other help to secure their human rights.

As well as helping individual clients, we use our considerable expertise to campaign for positive changes.

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June 21, 2010 | | Tags: | No Comments »

Funeral Blinkers

In the entire BBC piece on UK military deaths reaching 300, that covers other nation’s military deaths and a graph…not one word of the Afghan civilian dead. Just as the Guardian reports- UK special envoy to Afghanistan who called for talks with Taliban quits- Exclusive: Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles on ‘extended leave’ after rocky relationship with Nato and US over tactics in conflict. Cameron hides behind the shield of uniformed ‘sacrifice’.

“But it’s a moment for the whole country to reflect on the incredible service and sacrifice and dedication that the armed forces give on our behalf.”

They do it because they are following orders, no more , no less, and it is our duty to ensure those orders are not from politicians who are lying or simply following other larger powers or engaging in remembrances of imperialism past. Or the myriad other less than honourable reasons for this war, Cameron tried, todays excuse is-

“We are there because the Afghans are not yet ready to keep their own country safe and to keep terrorists and terrorist training camps out of their country.”

I’m sure to a devastated Afghan family Catterick, Biggin Hill or Chelsea Barracks look very much like terrorist training camps right now. When will they come and make us ‘safe’ Dave?

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World Refugee Day

(UNHCR) – As millions of people around the globe were marking World Refugee Day on Sunday, UNHCR chief António Guterres called on the international community to do more for the forcibly displaced.

High Commissioner made his call during a press conference in Syria –broadcast on a live video link –where he met earlier in the day with President Bashar Assad and other top leaders. Syria hosts about 1 million mainly Iraqi refugees, according to the government.

“I appeal to the international community to do more to host refugees,” Guterres said just two days after the UN refugee agency announced that 100,000 Iraqi refugees have been referred for resettlement from the Middle East to third countries since 2007, a major milestone for one of the world’s largest refugee populations.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, also made an appeal on behalf of refugees in a special World Refugee Day (WRD) message. “Refugees have been deprived of their homes, but they must not be deprived of their futures,” he said, while calling for working with host governments to deliver services and for intensified efforts to resolve conflicts so that refugees can return home.

HM Government, is not listening-

The United Nations is to investigate claims that handcuffed Iraqi asylum seekers were beaten by British security officers during a charter flight back to Baghdad.

As many as 25 of 42 men deported from Heathrow on Wednesday evening were reportedly under detention at Baghdad airport yesterday, despite being screened in advance by Iraqi officials in the UK.

Iraqi officials were alleged to have boarded when the flight touched down early on Thursday to help security staff employed by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) punch and drag reluctant failed asylum seekers off the plane.

The UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) has repeatedly condemned Britain and other EU countries for returning failed asylum seekers to Baghdad, maintaining that Iraq’s central provinces are unsafe.

This is one of the mysterious flights that our government (of all stripes in the last few years) have been flying, more recently it became very strange indeed, the courts were told not to get in the way with last minute injunctions and Iraqi Embassy ‘personnel’ were touring migrant jails here, although the Embassy denied it at first. Cameron then tried to use war porn soldier worship -those returning home was one of the reasons “our brave servicemen and women fought and died- in the country.‘ No, really. The government also used a change in legal aid payments system to stiff Refugee and Migrant Justice, a charity that helped migrants and asylum seekers in their cases, causing it to go into administration, then crowed about it with lies and austerity chic. And that is but one nation, one we personally took a role in destroying.

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June 20, 2010 | | Tags: , | No Comments »

Leader Of Green Party- Cuts Are An Ideological Choice

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MP – Cuts are not an economic inevitability. They are an ideological choice. Politicians of all parties are now sharpening their axes to slash public spending, forcing those on lower incomes, who depend on public services the most, to pay the highest price for the recent excesses of the bankers.

There is a choice. We should ask those best able to pay to foot the bill through fairer taxation. That’s the challenge I’m issuing: for that political choice to be made. It must be clearly asserted that we are not all in this together: that some had more responsibility for this crisis than others, and some benefited more from the boom that preceded it. Those who enjoyed the largest benefits must pay up now. For that to happen, fair taxes, not cuts, must become the new big idea to replace today’s callous and uncaring cuts fanaticism.

The UK is currently one of the most unequal societies in Europe. But the financial crisis offers us an opportunity to rebalance the tax system. We could do it, for example, by applying the 50% tax rate to incomes above £100,000, abolishing the upper limit for national insurance contributions, raising capital gains tax to the recipient’s highest income tax rate, and helping lower earners by reintroducing the 10% tax band.

Moreover, the huge extent of tax avoidance, tax evasion and unpaid tax in the UK economy is truly staggering.  HM Revenue & Customs themselves admit that tax evasion and avoidance together come to at least £40 billion a year, whilst in November 2009 they also admitted there was £28 billion of unpaid tax owing to them. Shocking as these numbers are, some experts have suggested that tax evasion – that’s deliberately breaking the law to not pay tax – might be as high as £70 billion a year, and tax avoidance – in other words, exploiting loopholes in tax law – might be £25 billion a year. That would take the total target for necessary action to collect tax due and owing to more than £100 billion a year

Whilst these appalling losses to the nation’s coffers are occurring, HM Revenue & Customs are pursuing a programme of job cuts which will ultimately reduce their own staff by 20,000 – close to one quarter of the total.(ht2 Derek Wall)

More

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MP will this week tell the coalition government there is “no good reason for any cuts in public expenditure during the life of this parliament.”

On Monday 21 June Britain’s first Green MP is to issue a new report – Cuts: the callous con trick (1) – in which she will make the case that cuts are unnecessary “because the economy could instead be rebalanced using additional tax revenues.”

The report, written jointly with tax expert Richard Murphy and Colin Hines of Finance for the Future, condemns the government “for failing to put to the electorate the option of fair tax instead of cuts,” and accuses ministers of increasing the likelihood of a double-dip recession.

Complete Report at http://www.financeforthefuture.com/TaxBriefing.pdf

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Police Repeatedly Lied About Muslim Surveillance Area

And lets face it, this was ACPO who would not be doing it without Whitehall’s knowledge, so really this is government lying to its citizens about a plan to spy on them based on racial profiling implemented by a private company that just happens to be the body all the chief police officers of the land run. The only people I see ‘at risk of extremism’ are our authorities and security forces, in fact given they have got away with murder and prosecute wars of aggression they are not ‘at risk’, they are extremists and we really out to doing something to stop them. A perhaps minor but telling example of the balance of power is- they stop & harass us for taking pictures, while they plot to spy on us 24 hours a day more than they already do, that is not an open or free society. There should be some ‘resignations’ over this but I expect there will not be, another signifier of their arrogance and assumption of privilege over us, a caste position that they will further reinforced by persuading the stupid and tired that Muslims are a separate population and what is done to them does not have implications for wider ‘white’ society. The overly co-operative approach the police take with the EDL is one example of this together with certain quarters of the media comparing anti fascist groups to fascist groups, as if racism was no more troubling an issue than opposing racism, it is just a valid opinion, like tea or coffee, of course such analogues are by their very nature an act of normalising racism just as this surveillance project was.

A confidential police document obtained by the Guardian reveals senior police officers were repeatedly confronted by local councillors last year. The councillors, who were largely sceptical, suggested the cameras were part of a counterterrorism initiative and said they were concerned they would unfairly target Muslims and damage community relations.

But Stuart Hyde, then an assistant chief constable at West Midlands police, dismissed their concerns, failed to disclose the cameras were being funded through counterterrorism money and wrongly indicated the camera scheme was primarily concerned with “reassurance and crime prevention”.

Project Champion was paid for by the Terrorism and Allied Matters fund, which is allocated by the Association of Chief Police Officers to projects that will “deter or prevent terrorism or help to prosecute those responsible”. Police sources have said the initiative was the first of its kind in the UK that sought to monitor a population seen as “at risk” of extremism.

There was no public consultation over the initiative.

According to the minutesa confidential police document obtained by the Guardian, Hyde failed to confirm Yaqoob’s suspicions about the funding arrangements. Instead, hepresented monitoring extremists as an ancillary benefit of the cameras and said only that “he would be lying” if he said the scheme “would not have any benefit around counterterrorism”, adding that “the reassurance and crime prevention benefits are far greater”.The minutes reveal the seven councillors were also told the cameras would not be installed before “a full consultation and assessment process”, which never took place.

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June 19, 2010 | | Tags: , | 2 Comments »
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