A couple have been sentenced to be stoned to death for alleged adultery by a tribal court in north-west Pakistan, with the woman’s life now considered in grave danger. The man involved, Zarkat Khan, has run away while the woman is in the custody of the court, according to residents in Kala Dhaka, a remote area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The death sentence, handed down in Manjakot village last month, will be carried out once the man is found, a member of the tribal court said. The woman, whose name is being withheld at the request of human rights groups, is being held in a nearby village, according to campaigners. She is married and believed to have three children. “As usual, it is the woman who is made to bear the brunt of such atrocious barbarism, injustice, and inhuman, un-Islamic sentences,” said the Woman’s Action Forum, a Pakistani non-governmental organisation. “Why is the provincial law enforcement system neither de jure nor de facto functional? Where are the women’s protection mechanisms and institutions?”
At the moment, 12 Iranian women and three men are awaiting execution by stoning despite an apparent last-minute reprieve for a mother of two who had been facing the sentence after being convicted of adultery.
This is just one of those cases where I have little to add in the form of an opinion or comment. What could we possibly say that would magically change this oppression?
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