International Women's Day. (BBC Roundup Here)

Women have managed to achieve equality in one field only: equal right to imprisonment, exile, torture, being killed, and now being slaughtered. In fact in the Islamic Penal Codes, Iranian women have the unenviable distinction of having a greater share of punishment. Let us first examine the question of liability to punishment.

Punishments.

Article 49 exempts children from punishment. Addendum 1 to this article defines a child as someone before puberty. But in the civil law puberty for boys is 15 and for girls 9 lunar years (article 1210, addendum 1). So girls come of age for punishments six years before boys. This is particularly striking since in everything else such as inheritance, custody over children, marriage, divorce, ownership, travel, giving witness etc women are considered delicate creatures in need of protection by men. But when it comes to being punished, suddenly they are more mature and responsible for their actions. Less rights, more punishment. One can imagine a situation where a boy of 14 and a girl of 9 steal. According to the law she would lose four fingers of her right hand for first offence (article 201), her left foot for the second offence, prison for third and execution for the fourth! He would go scott free.

When a woman is stoned to death in Iran, as happened frequently in the wake of the 1979 revolution, she is covered in a white sheet and buried up to her breasts in a hole. Article 102 of Iran's Penal Code says that men should be buried up to their waists, and women up to their breasts.

Only small stones are used, to prolong the agony of the punishment, though these must be larger than a pebble. Article 104 of Iran's Penal Code states that when adulters are stoned that the stones should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones."

Often, the face of the woman is covered, so she does not see her assailants, and they do not see her. In films I have seen of public stonings, it takes several minutes for the victim to die. The woman pictured above was stoned to death in Iran.

Update. A ten minute report from Newsnight at the twenty five minute mark, usually comes on-line 00.00 GMT for 24Hrs. Mon. to Fri.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest. Wilde