I recently shared e-mail that I got asking me to sign an Amnesty International Petition to send to the President of Nigeria asking for clemency for Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and having a child outside marriage, and who has been sentenced to death by stoning by the court, the sentence to be carried out after the baby can be rescued from this.
Yahoo's Virus Hoax Busters have some things to say on the subject similar to my views.
- This Nigerian woman has in fact been sentenced to death for allegedly bearing a child out of wedlock (the father denies responsibility, so the woman is automatically guilty). This is real. This is not a hoax. We agree on that point.
- Internet petitions do not have much impact in the West, let alone on this Nigerian culture, says the moderator of the discussion.
- Well we do not exactly agree here. I think this effort raises public awareness of the work of Amnesty International, especially when it results in the European Parliament voting to boycott Miss World contest in Nigeria, and the President of Mexico making a special trip to visit the President of Nigeria to appeal on behalf of the woman's case.
I passed this appeal on to some people who are into that kind of thing, while I seriously doubt Amnesty International is going to get significant change in nations supporting death sentence for violation of Islamic Law, even though they have collected over a million signatures so far (what does this say about the billions of people who have not signed the petition?). I think Amnesty International power is when a nation says one thing and does another, so by illuminating duplicity, the exceptions can be stopped. This is not duplicity. It is Nigerian law and policy.
Here is a directory of links to current Amnesty International themes:
- Stop Torture
- The Death Penalty
- G8 exporting tools for use in Human Rights abuses
- Police Accountability in Human Rights
- Human Rights Education
- Human Rights impact of Economic Activities
- International Justice
- Health Professionals
- Child Warriors before Emotional Maturity
- Guatamala History Repeats
- Diamond Trade's dark side.
Anyhow my referrers are showing someone doing a Google search on the notion that this is a hoax. I found a ton of searches for variations on the woman's name, Nigerian woman, hoax, Amnesty International petition, and all the hits were either on my site, sites about this woman's plight, or Google combining different posts that contained individual words of the search. It is possible that there are a bunch of people doing similar searches. The sad thing is that this happens to many women around the world, and is so alien to our western culture that many people receiving the e-mail appeal info about the petition, their first reaction is to wonder if this is a hoax. So I am looking at some of the other posts on the topic that were in the Google searches, and finding some interesting sites.
Another Nigerian woman, Safiya Husaini, was also sentenced to death by stoning, but an appeals court let her live. But it is a continuing problem because Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians, who have different moral codes.
- The President of Mexico will be meeting with the President of Nigeria, and this injustice is one of the things the Mexican President will be arguing against.
- QUOTE
- The man Lawal identified as her baby's father denied the accusation and was acquitted for lack of evidence.
- UNQUOTE
- One would think that a gene test could prove or disprove it one way or the other, and the fact that no such test was done substantiates the complaints of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA).
- Other nations are protesting this at top government levels.
- The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) labels this as injustice in the name of Islam.
- The punishment for zina (fornication) by unmarried persons is a certain number of lashings, not stoning, and very stringent conditions are needed to verify the crime. For example if Amina became pregnant through rape, then she is innocent of any crime.
- The IHRC has Action alerts on Amina Lawal (Nigeria) and Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (USA). In the latter case, this man got a life sentence in which they are arguing many inconsistencies in the lack of evidence that the right man was convicted.
- Women's Rights Watch update # 2 on the continuing story of the Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal.
- QUOTE
- The judge has declared that Amina should not be executed until 2004, if she loses her appeal, so that she can look after her 5-month old baby daughter Wassila.
- The Nigerian Justice Minister has joined the fight all the way to the Nigerian Supreme Court.
- Here is a Canadian source that seems legitimate to me.
- Exclusive Interview with Amina Lawal published in UK's Mirror.
- QUOTE
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On Monday, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld the sentence of death by stoning on Amina. She should be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and perish beneath a hail of rocks, half-bricks... anything conveniently to hand.
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Summoned before the tribal elders - who traditionally settle matters before police intervene - Yahay accepted paternity and promised to pay medical expenses for Amina and her baby.
But he recanted after his family allegedly convinced him that his acceptance would bring shame on them.
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UNQUOTE
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Amnesty International says that death sentence by stoning is prohibited by two UN Treaties that Nigeria has signed:
- The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has appealed to Nigeria on behalf of Amina Lawal.
- The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) is protesting that this Sharia legal code, as implemented in Northern Nigeria, is unfair to women.
- The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has listed this appeal on their page of Violence against Women, although the problem here is that of Islamic Law's attitude towards women, whether they behaved in a manner that religion considers immoral, or were a victim of rape.
- The American Women's Self Defense Association (AWSDA) has a link to this appeal (on upper left corner of their home page).
- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) On_Line forums has a link to this appeal.
- The USA National Organization of Women (NOW) is protesting a couple who were sentenced to death by stoning (both husband-to-be and wife-to-be) for making love before they got married.
- This stuff is no hoax, it is normal Nigerian legal system, and Nigeria is not the only nation like this.
Global Feminist News Wire has several interesting relevant links
Here is a link that indicates that the Amnesty International effort is no Hoax, but some people searching on Google find the site because they looking for the name of the victim, and the word hoax, which are two separate topics on the same site, because lots of people write about both problems like this, and the problem of e-hoaxes. http://crawfurd.dk/africa/index.html#amina
[Crawfurd] shares lots of info about Nigeria such as QUOTE
Hoax Letters / E-mails from Nigeria
Several people has received e-mails with a friendly and very polite business suggestion from someone apparently living in Nigeria (I certainly have received a few of these scams myself). Many of these mails originates from Nigeria, but lately I have also received one which seems to be sent from D. R. Congo. The sender usually claims that he has access to a large sum of money (usually from the government or some private company). The sender asks for help to transfer the money out of the country. This is said to be risk free transaction and you will receive a large sum of money for helping him out. Don't even think about it! Follow this link if you wish to report a scam or read more about this subject: Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website.
UNQUOTE
I know about this. It is an international scam to get access to your bank account numbers for the purpose of draining them. Honest people should see through the scam, and struggle to figure out which is the correct government agency to report it to (US Secret Service in the USA, because this is a Currency Crime). Unfortunately some big corporations have dishonest clerks, which have led to the corporations bank accounts being drained.
Another very interesting site linked by my reverse searching review, that I want to explore more some time: Crime on the Internet
5:11:37 PM 
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