Just relax and take it if a rapist attacks you in Iran. If you fight back, you may find yourself sentenced to death, like 18-year-old Nazanin. Oh, but wait, I forgot, if you do get raped and don’t have four male witnesses to the actual physical act, you can be imprisoned, flogged or stoned for having sex outside of marriage. Here’s the shocking story, from Iran Focus via Feministing:
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.
The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.
Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.
She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.
As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.
The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death.
I’m trying to get an update on the case, and will report back if I find out more, but meanwhile, take action.
Write the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Louise Arbour and ask for the UN to raise the case of Nazanin with Iran.
Sign the petition to Kofi Annan and Arbour.
And check out Amnesty International’s page on underage executions in Iran– Nazarin is far from alone. (I know this is just their bureaucratic language, but it bothered me that AI refers to Nazarin as a "child offender," when, in fact, she not only committed no crime in protecting herself and her niece but behaved with great courage.)
