INJUSTICES AGAINST WOMEN

The Stoning of Soraya M.
This article was sourced from the internet and I thought it was so compelling. If you're not familiar with this story and are as moved as I am about the terrible things still happening to women in this day and time I think you will want to read this.

Please, take the time to watch this film, and tell an many people as you can about it as well. Again, a special thanks to those who have joined the community and all others who care about helping to help share these tragic stories with the world. If we don't tell these stories, and share them, then it is as if these crimes never happened. The site I listed gives more information and also allows you to send the trailer via email to others. Please help tell Soraya's story.

This was in fact one of Soraya's last concerns, that the world would never know what was done to her. That her unjust and terrible death would be in vain. Soraya's aunt promised her that her story would be told, and to the entire world. Against all odds, this aunt, a woman in a small Iranian village, magaged to keep this amazing promise.

Later, as Soraya's aunt tells a journalist about Soraya's death, she pleads with him to be her voice. We can help be her voice as well.

This movie relates exactly to this issue, the silence regarding injustices against women, stories of unspeakable violence that go untold and unheard by the world at large. In this case, ignorance of these crimes is not bliss, not for the women who live their lives under the threat of violence and death. The mainstream media seems to have little interest in what happens to women, especially those in third world nations. This must change, and we can change it.




For those who can't see the trailer or film.
"The Stoning Of Soraya M.," based on a true story about an innocent woman was convicted of adultery and stoned as punishment. This woman had no chance at all to defend herself from this lurid accusation. Under the law in Iran, if a woman accuses her husband of adultery, she has the burden of proof. If he accuses her of adultery, she again has the burden of proving that she is innocent.

In the case of Soraya M, her true crime was, after twentry years of marriage and giving birth to four children, she had aged. A "crime" many of us have shared. Her husband decided that he wanted to marry a pretty, much younger girl, but couldn't afford to support both households.

So, Soraya had to go, and this husband was willing to do anything to get rid of her. He beat and demeaned her constantly, demanding a divorce. Soraya wanted the divorce, but had two daughters to support ( the husband was taking her two sons to live in blissful matrimony with his teenybopper wife to be ) so Soraya stood her gorund, taking a job housekeeping for a local widower and his handicapped son in order to make enough money to care for her daughters.

The widower liked her and gave her a sewing machine which she spent her "free time" sewing clothes for local women on, to get the money she needed for the divorce sooner. But this was not enough for husband. He wanted his child bride now.

So, he accused Soraya of adultery, his proof, she smiled at the widower. Then he and some "authorities" in their village threatened the widowed man she worked for with also being charged with adultery, ( as if ) and making his mentally hadicapped son an orphan with no one to care for him. The widower is afraid and caved under this threat. Then things moved very quickly.

Soraya's husband made the accusation "official" by beating her in the streets while screaming that she was an adulteress, only using uglier terms. Court was quickly held, a court in which Soraya was "unable" to attend. In fact, I believe no women were able to attend. This was manly stuff. In any case, Soraya was not there.

Within a matter of a few hours, Soraya's fate was sealed. She was, shock!, found guilty, and the punishment followed as soon as a hole could be dug, in which she was buried up to her knees with her hands tied. This is how Soraya died, beaten, humiliated, wrongly convicted, on her knees, buried to her waist in dirt, being struck again and again by rocks as many people in her village cheered and carried on as if it were some sporting event.

This may not sound like a movie you want to see, or one that has any uplifting qualities about it. I urge you to put aside your qualms and watch it anyway, because it proves that the voice of one brave woman can make a difference. Although the practice of stoning women "convicted" of crimes of a sexual nature, including rape, the best selling book, also entitled "The Stoning Of Soraya M., made a huge difference in how often these cruel and primitive sentences are handed out, but also made the laws regarding convictions of crimes committed by girls and women far stricter.

This movie can only do more to stop this barbaric brand of "justice."

Yet another huge reason for loving our country and knowing we are blessed to live in such a place of freedom. But I think we are not entitled to feel smug about it do you?