Rights Group Advocates for Iranian Woman Facing Death for Killing Would-Be Rapist
by Chad Groening
March 20, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A conservative human rights and civil liberties advocacy organization is urging the White House to intervene in the case of an Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death for stabbing a man who was attempting to rape her. John Whitehead is president of the Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, which is calling for U.S. government officials to get involved in the case of a young woman named Nazanin, who has been sentenced to hang for the "crime" of defending herself against three male attackers that were assaulting her and her niece. "If ever there were a time for the United States to take a stand for basic equality and women's rights," he says, "the case of 18-year-old Nazanin presents us with such an opportunity."
In March 2005, then-17-year-old Nazanin and her niece were attacked while walking in a Tehran park. According to news reports, three men threw stones at the two young women, wrestled them to the ground and assaulted them. In her effort to fend off one of the men who was trying to rape her, Nazanin stabbed the man in the chest, and he died as a result. But despite the young woman's claim that she acted in self defense, on January 6, 2006, the Republic of Iran sentenced her to death by hanging for fatally stabbing her attacker.
Whitehead considers Nazanin's case an outrageous miscarriage of justice. "She was out walking, which should be normal in normal society," he notes, "when she was attacked by three different men. She had a knife, and she defended herself. She stabbed a man who was raping her, and that violates Islamic law."
And sadly, the human rights advocate notes, many women in Iran have been raped "over the last decade or so -- for what reason we don't know, except that the country's out of control." And equally sad, he asserts, is the fact that a number of women who have defended themselves against rapists or male attacks have suffered fates similar to Nazanin's, many ending up being as much victimized by the oppressive Iranian justice system as they were by their attackers.
Whitehead has sent a letter to President Bush, appealing to him to take the lead in raising an outcry against Iran's inhumane treatment of this young woman and others like her. The letter pointed out that Nazanin's situation is not uncommon in Iran, a country that has been criticized for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment and in which more women are reportedly executed per year than in any other nation.
The Rutherford Institute president also emphasized in the letter the need for the U.S. to exercise moral leadership by calling on Iran to show the unfairly convicted woman clemency. 'America has long been a champion of human rights in word, if not always in deed,' he wrote. 'And although America's reputation as a defender of human rights has been tarnished by allegations of detainee abuse, Nazanin's plight presents the Bush Administration with an opportunity to stand by its much-avowed commitment to human rights.'
The letter to President Bush was copied to the United Nations Secretary General, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, the Embassy of Pakistan and a group of U.S. Senate and House leaders. Rutherford Institute is also urging ordinary Americans to get involved by expressing their outrage to the Iranian government over the completely unjust treatment Nazanin has received.
"Tyrants don't like bad press," Whitehead says, "so the more hoopla, the more [people are] made aware, there's a possibility something good could come out of it." In any event, he contends, for Americans to "turn a blind eye to the travesty of justice being meted out to this young woman would be to render meaningless anything the United States were to say about women's rights in the future."
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
