Stop the Execution of Zeinab

Zeinab Skaanvand another young Iranian woman from Kurdistan region is set to be executed by the Islamic regime of Iran. She is accused of killing her husband. When she was arrested, only 17 was held in the police station and tortured by male police officers for weeks to make her confess to the killing. Zeinab was denied access to a lawyer until the very last minute before her unfair trail. In court she refused to plead guilty but made a shocking statement that the brother of her husband who had raped her many times was responsible for the murder.

The court ignored that Zeinab was abused for months by her husband and refused her request for a divorce. The court ignored that she was raped and raped by her brother in law. The court ignored that she was forced to confess after month of torture and the promise by her brother in law that he would pardon her (according to the Islamic law Qesas under which she is sentenced to death, she would go free if a male member of killed person family pardon her). The court ignored that she made the confession, when she had no access to a lawyer. But what the court relied on was the initial confession that she made under the force, physical torture and deception. Zeinab under such highly discriminating circumstances was sentenced to death by hanging.  

Zeinab has been the victim of a patriarchal society, to become a bride when she was still a teenager, she has been abused by her husbands and raped by her brother in law, abused and torture by the police officers and the prosecutors and that is still not enough for an anti-woman, religious regime who wants to penalise her with death because she is a woman and so she is guilty in any case.

This brutal and anti-woman regime has taken the life of hundreds of women who have been the victim of male supremacy, rape, domestic violence and other kinds of violence.

Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 19 years old Iranian girl was executed in 2014 for stabbing the man who attempted to rape her. There have been many similar cases of execution such as the case of Delar Darabi, .. but this cannot go on. Many other women such as Razieh Ebrahimi who is accused of killing her husband because of years physical and verbal abuse are on the death row.

It is enough!! we cannot allow that a rotten religious regime to take the life of so many of our young women who have suffered so much and are trapped in the cycle of abuse at home and by the system in a society that patriarchy is dominant and is strongly protected by the reactionary traditions, religion and above all with a suppression machine called Islamic regime of Iran. These women have a life ahead of them and deserve to have it free of violence and abuses.

The Islamic regime forged its ideological identity by imposing laws and rules on women, aimed at keeping them subordinate to men as lesser beings living lives restricted by their gender. It has always reserved its most cruel repression for women, especially those who defy these reactionary laws and the system as a whole. The theocratic state considers any action by a woman not under the control of her masters a threat to the whole social order and the patriarchal and religious ideology that binds it together.

The Islamic regime is well aware that increasing number of women is losing their patients and cannot tolerate such suffocating anti-woman relation in which the women are not treated as a human being. They are aware that increasing numbers of women are rebelling against the reactionary traditions and the laws and religion that promote and support them. The young women want to marry those who they love even if they have to run away from the home. If they are not protected against the rapist they will defend themselves. If they are not defended against the violent husband they will have to fight it themselves.

The relation between the Islamic regime and the people, during more than 37 years of their rule has been defined only through suppression, prison, torture, assault, rape and execution.

The oppressive anti-women regime of the Islamic Republic has executed at least tens of thousands of political prisoners since its foundation in 1979 and it has executed more than 2000 prisoners including political prisoners since 2014. Once more they have retained the number one position on a world scale!

Since Rohani’s presidency and the Iranian regime’s efforts to convince the US and European imperialists that they can be relied on as a "legitimate" and powerful state in helping them to come out of the its economic and Middle East crisis, the regime has intensified the arrests and executions of their opponents. In turn the imperialist powers, have turned a blind eye on the executions, the intensification of the subordination of women, the imprisonment of the opposition, the repression and imprisonment of workers and toiling people by the Islamic state, as they have done throughout the past 37 years since the Islamic Regime came to power.

The 8 March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) in UK is calling to all progressive and freedom lovers to act immediately to prevent the execution of Zeinab Sekaanvand and the lives of hundreds who are in danger especially those women who are in death row. We should be able to stop the killings of every single one of them by organizing our protests.

Please send your protest against this execution and your support for Zeinab to our e-mail address

8 March Women's  Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan)-UK

October 2016

zan_dem_iran@hotmail.com   / www.8mars.com    https://facebook.com/8Mars.org