The outrage in the Western world over the Sakineh Ashtiani issue increasingly seems like an outrage that is directed more at Iran, than any real concern over human rights. US President Barack Obama, who only the other day, lectured India on human rights, so far has not been able to utter a single world against a similar case in Saudi Arabia, where another young woman is on a death row.
Last month, the Supreme Court in Riyadh endorsed the death sentence imposed on Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek. Her crime: an infant had died in her care in 2005. Rizana has been sentenced to death for murdering the child. Rizana, who is or Sri Lankan origin, was 17 years old at the time of the incident. The recruitment bureau had altered her date of birth in her passport, making her 23-years old in order to employ her. Rizana is to be beheaded.
The issue at hand here is not that of any comparison, which would be odious. But the fact remains that while the Western media has remained flooded with anti-Iran rhetoric last so many weeks, the case of Rizana Nafeek has received little or no mileage. The Carla Brunis can find all the time in the world to write copious letters to save Sakineh, but they have not a single word for Rizana.
What's wrong with Rizana? Is stoning to death (Sakineh's punishment) harsher than beheading (Rizana's)? Or is it because the guilty at hand in the first case is a West-baiter, and in the latter a Western ally?
One needs to be a consummate idiot not to see through the hypocritical veneer of the Western world. Many of the countries which have been decrying the death sentence on Sakineh have not themselves ended the death penalty practice. That, needless to say, includes the United States — the country that never lets go a chance to lecture others about human rights.
Enough of anti-US diatribe. Let's make light of things with a short quiz.
Question: Which country has the highest execution rate for women?
Now, please don't say Iran. Well, it is Saudi Arabia. Didn't know that did you (unless you made a calculated guess going by the two countries in question)? Maybe you didn't know because the Western media hadn't told you. Of course, it will tell you the moment it manages to take time out of its anti-Iran campaign. They have an axe to grind there. Or, maybe a stone.
No, no one is saying that Iran is a country of saints. It is just that when you talk of a civil approach to civilisation, you ought not to maintain double standards. If a medieval practice holds bad for Iran, it must for Saudi Arabia too.
Saudi Arabia, which has one of the highest execution rates in the world, has sentenced to death 40 women since 1990. Of these, 22 were foreign workers. There is not much of a free press there, and hardly any news of this sort trickles out. At least, till a few years back. But now that it does, it is quite disconcerting to see that fury with which Western democracies condemn countries like Iran, is matched with stony silence when it comes to allies like Saudi Arabia. Silence comes at a price, of course. The price being oil, if I am not wrong.
I am not even going into the issue that Rizana was only 17 at the time of the incident. I won't go into the fact that Saudi Arabia has a dubious record of executing people convicted of crimes committed when they were under the age of 18. I won't tell you that it has even executed children as young as 13.
If your heart bleeds for Sakineh, it should for Rizana too.
Meanwhile, you can imagine what it is like to be beheaded. If you can't, get hold of some Hollywood horror DVD.
