Iranian Woman Sentenced to Death by Stoning as Activists Decry “War against Women”

The recent sentencing of an Iranian woman to lashings, 25-years of imprisonment, and death by stoning underscores the Islamic Republic’s “continued war against women,” according to a human rights activists quoted by Benjamin Weinthal in a report published Thursday in The Jerusalem Post.

The punishment, handed down to a 25-year-old who was convicted of complicity in her husband’s murder, prompted activists to issue sharp criticisms of the regime’s brutal suppression of human rights and repression of women.

Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a campaigner who works with Iran Human Rights, told Weinthal, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “We need to note that an official Iranian website released the stoning sentence news, and we should question the regime’s motives for doing so. The stoning sentence is an indication of the Iranian regime’s continued war against women in Iran.” Nayeb Yazdi pointed out that stoning sentences are currently issued less frequently, and that international pressure has often led to the sentences being changed to death by hanging. However, she noted that “[the] rate of executions in Iran has not decreased in the last few years, it has increased.”

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