Hajiyeh Esmaelvand was stoned to death for committing adultery in Iran on December 2004. In a similar case, Shahnaz, another 35-year old Iranian woman, was sentenced to death by stoning on August 4, 2003 for committing adultery, in accordance with Article 83 of the Iranian Penal Code. International protests were only able to prevent her death by stoning sentence but her life could not be saved. Shahnaz was decapitated instead.

These are but a few cases which have been prominent in the media. Such cases shake us to our very core but once you move up to the far middle-east, they increase in number. Cases of stoning are mostly reported in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

These helpless victims are not protected under any law and efforts made by numerous organizations have failed to effectively eradicate this brutal practice. A social networking site, YouTube even has numerous video footages where these barbaric acts committed by some unruly forces in society are viewed every day. A bleeding woman pleading for her life while onlookers throw stones at her is a grotesque sight. These victims do not deserve capital punishment and their trials are highly unfair. The Iranian law needs to be reformed and the practice of torturing and slowly killing victims by throwing large stones needs to be abolished.

Stoning is as old as time and it began as a capital punishment where people throw stones at a person till he/she dies. No one particular person was responsible for the death of the person being stoned. There are historical reports of stoning which happened in ancient Greece. The Koran does not mention stoning to death for those who have committed adultery and many Islamic scholars are of the view that stoning to death is not an Islamic law. Yet, time and again we hear reports of women who have been subjected to stoning and death through torture. In Iran, Shadi Sadr, a woman’s activist has been continuously making efforts to put an end to stoning. She is one of the Iranians who have campaigned against capital punishment by stoning. TheEnd Stoning Forever campaign is one of several launched by Women's Field, a women's rights group of which Sadr is a member.

Victims in majority of these stoning cases are women. Women are not treated equally with men under the Iranian law and by courts, and they are also particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because their higher illiteracy rate makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit. Officials have claimed that stoning has been halted but the bleak reality is that it continues to happen even today. More efforts have to be made and public awareness has to spread for practices like stoning to come to an end.

Team MSN She