Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Please read. Matter of life and death.

Plums has read my mind, or summink. Was just going to post on this very same topic:

Amina Lawal, a 30 year-old Nigerian woman, sentenced by a Shari’ah court to death by stoning, has once again had her appeal adjourned. Amina’s appeal will now be heard on 27 August 2003. According to the registrar of the Shari’ah Court of Appeal of Katsina State, the hearing could not take place because there was an inadequate number of tribunal members to hear the appeal. Two of the judges were reportedly serving on ad-hoc elections tribunals, constituted after general elections in April and May 2003.

Amina confessed to having had a child while divorced. Pregnancy outside of marriage constitutes sufficient evidence for a woman to be convicted of adultery according to the new Shari’ah-based penal code for Muslims, introduced in Katsina state.


Yes, you read that right. Amina Lawal is going to be stoned to death for having a baby. I'll repeat that for the hard of thinking: Amina Lawal, a breathing, feeling, thinking, human being, is going to be buried up to her neck in the ground and get rocks chucked at her head till she dies because she's had a baby.

Please sign the petition. It'll take about two seconds and your input may help save Amina.


Sorry; that's probably put a crimp in your lunch break, hasn't it? I get all worked up over stuff like this all the time. Sometimes it gets written up; sometimes it's so horrific, so painful to even think about, that it seems wrong to put it up here. I know that I should, but I don't want to keep ripping everyone's guts out all the time, y'know? Thinking about creating a seperate blog for things like this. Just put up the petition links here, along with a distress warning, and then a longer commentary on the subject at hand on the Scary Blog. Hmm.

Should've picked a different title for this baby, maybe. Every day in every way, I feel more and more like an lefty anarchist version of Rorschach.

No comments: