Stop Stoning Forever Campaign

The Stop Stoning Forever Campaign started its activities in circumstances where publication of any news regarding stoning was taboo. So, the campaign initially decided to work on the issue indirectly and through international human rights organisations as the activists: identified those sentenced to stoning; conducted research; defended their cases as volunteer attorneys; and published press releases about their status. From the beginning, the campaign invited experienced women activists from inside Iran who had transnational links, as well as activists from the transnational women's movement outside Iran who had good links with activists inside Iran, to be consultants and advisors. The idea was to not only disseminate the campaign message to the public and government inside Iran but also to build an international mechanism that could force the Iranian government to stop honour-related penal provisions such as stoning.

This collaborative approach is also illustrated by the fact that over 70 of the campaign's international ally organisations signed the campaign's petition during the 2007 Feminist Dialogue in Nairobi, Kenya. Although the official response was to deny any practice of stoning in Iran, publication of a November 2007 speech by the spokesman for the judiciary meant that authorities had broken the silence they had built around the issue. Gradually, the media began to publish news, reports, and analysis by the campaign.

Although face-to-face interactions had been the central communication medium, circumstances in the life of the campaign necessitated, in 2007, a move to use of technology and virtual spaces for advocacy. When the campaign learned that a woman and man were to be stoned in less than 48 hours, members took to Meydaan-e-Zanan [Women's Field] (the campaign's official website) to spark action. The site carried the telephone numbers of the city of Takestan's judicial authorities and other high-ranking members of the Islamic Republic's judiciary, urging all to contact them and object to the execution. (This short telephone campaign led to the halting of the stoning). The campaign had used the internet as a tool for publishing news and reports on stoning before, but this particular strategy involved its use to facilitate mobilisation and networking.

The campaign also worked with religious reformists. The campaign's dominant discourse remained secular, but the activists also continued to encourage clerics and the religious elites to prove that stoning is not rooted in the Quran and to bring political pressure on the judiciary and legislative bodies to repeal stoning. Three weeks after the success in halting the stoning described in the paragraph above, the same condemned woman was secretly stoned to death in a desert. The publication of the details about her death, including pictures of the stones still covered in blood, motivated religious figures and religious elites to get involved in the question of stoning.

Women, Rights, Gender.

According to organisers, the fundamentalist government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 started a new era whose "main goal regarding women is to return them to the home. Women's gains regarding Family Code reforms and the right to divorce (although limited) are vanishing, while the new government is seeking approval of new laws to make polygamy easier for men. Legislation based on the concept of 'chastity' (efaaf) is aimed at introducing repressive rules covering all aspects of women's lives, including their clothing, their behaviour in public and even their occupational relations or general interaction with men."

Stop Stoning Forever emerged from an event that occurred in 2006, a year after the fundamentalists reasserted themselves and 4 years after the suspension of stoning as a penalty. Research by feminist activists found that Mahboubeh M. and Abbass H. had indeed been stoned to death secretly in the early hours of the morning in the cemetery of the religious city of Mashhad by the authorities and volunteer militia. Mahboubeh, who had reportedly forcibly been married at the age of 16 and whose attempts to divorce the abusive man had failed, collaborated with her lover to kill her husband. Since speaking of stoning was taboo and printing news regarding stoning would put a newspaper in great danger, the press was not willing to print anything. But in August 2006, Ashraf Kalhori called her attorney from Evin Prison in Tehran and said she was to be stoned in 15 days. Ashraf had often complained to the courts about being beaten by her husband but her divorce had been rejected for "lack of evidence." She also denied having any relationship with her husband's friend, who had killed him, but the court rejected her defence. In this case, activists managed to spread the news at the international level and called upon women's organisations and human rights institutions to save Ashraf Kalhori. The execution was ultimately called off, but as long as the penalty of stoning existed in the law books, Ashraf and many other women remained exposed to the threat of stoning.

From the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign's point of view, patriarchy and discrimination based on gender, race, and class as individual factors are not enough to lead to the stoning of women. The campaign sees stoning as the result of a combination of patriarchy, other forms of discrimination (such as class and tribal structures), and religious fundamentalism. "More than 80% of adultery cases where a sentence of stoning was passed were at the discretion of the judge...[which] is also applied in a very gendered manner."

Reportedly, sessions to plan the campaign's public advocacy became an entry point for a detailed analysis of how women sentenced to stoning are the victims of structural discrimination: forced and underage marriages, poverty, discrimination, domestic violence, and deprivation of basic rights such as divorce. "Stoning allowed a discussion about all kinds of discrimination caused by patriarchy, governmental religious fundamentalism, discrimination in society and by the government, including against non-Farsi-speaking ethnic minorities."

Since its start in 2006, the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign has rescued seven women and one man from stoning and secured their release from prison, while also getting the execution of one woman's sentence stayed; sentences for three additional cases have been altered to lashing or imprisonment.