United Nations Official Accuses Iran of Women’s Rights Abuses
Feminist
Majority, February 10, 2005
A United Nations human rights investigator accused Iran
of sentencing women to death based on flimsy evidence and called on the
Iranian government to abolish the death penalty. Yakin Erturk, the UN Special
Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, asserts that “discriminatory laws and
malfunction in the administration of justice result in impunity for
perpetrators and perpetuate discrimination and violence against women,”
reports Reuters.
Erturk found that Iranian women face psychological,
sexual and physical violence in the home, but there are no laws to protect
women. Women who have been raped face the punishment of adultery if they
cannot prove that the rape happened. In addition, women who kill their rapist
in self-defense are sentenced to death. Earlier this week the Iranian Nobel
Peace Prize for Human Rights winner Shirin Ebadi said that “women in Iran
are terrorized,” pointing to discriminatory laws such as a woman’s
testimony being worth only half of a man’s, according to Voice of America.
Iran’s newly elected parliament has been imposing more
restrictions on women’s rights and is denying efforts for gender equality
and women’s inheritance rights. Two women were recently sentenced to death
for so-called “crimes against morality.”
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