Just a quick post today, because this made me physically ill and I think other people should know about it.  A few hours ago, a great injustice was done.  An Iranian woman who confessed to a murder at 17 years old was executed--even though the judiciary had granted her a stay of execution, and even though there was evidence that she had confessed only to save her boyfriend.  And, perhaps, to save herself from flogging and imprisonment, since even having a boyfriend in Iran is frowned upon legally. 

The BBC News reports: "...on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman's noose.  'Mother they are going to execute me, please save me,' she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: 'We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it.'"

"We are going to execute your daughter, and there's nothing you can do about it."  I'm not a parent, but I imagine those are some of the worst words a parent could possibly hear.  They have rightly sparked protest and outrage across the world.

The judiciary had granted her a stay of execution and it was the prison that ignored it, but in a liberal democracy these kinds of things just. don't. happen.   There are checks on prison guards, and there is at the very least a legal committment to ensure that prisoners are treated humanely.  And for god's sake, if a prisoner is given a stay of execution or a new trial, that is honored and she is not simply murdered when the prison administration thinks no one is looking.  

I wonder sometimes if Iran is trying to make itself a pariah; if that martyr's complex they've had since the 1979 revolution has twisted, taken a more perverse form, refused to go away.  This case--as well as the harsh sentence for an American journalist and a mass execution of various drug addicts, gays, and, yes, murderers a few weeks ago--clearly indicate that Iran wants nothing to do with the gentler and more magnanimous approach to criminal justice or human rights found in secular democracies.  I understand that Iran--and the mullahs who run the show, in particular--resent the West for the abuses of the Shah, but the generation who remembers and actually gives a crap is dying out, or deciding that a theocracy is two steps back from the step forward the Shah's exile represented.

What will the leaders of Iran do when memories of the Pahlavis are long gone, and the only thing they have to legitimize themselves is what they do for the population today?  You'd think Khamenei, Ahmedinijad, and others would worry about that sometimes, but it seems like they're so wrapped up in thumbing their nose to the UN and secular democracy that they just don't care right now.

And you know the worst part?  In light of the torture memos, we in the U.S. don't have a lot of ground to stand on here, at least in their eyes.  Canada--a clean slate if I ever saw one--is doing some great work in this area, at least, although given that Iran tortured one of their journalists to death that makes sense.  I think that waterboarding prisoners we'd snatched from abroad was barbaric and ultimately ineffective, but it was an exception to the rules in US policy on prisoner treatment.  (At least the written ones--we've sponsored some horrible crimes in Latin America and Africa, too, but the context and detail was a little different.)  Whereas lawless executions, torture, and unfair trials are the rules in Iran.  But both acts are disgusting, and if the US is to properly serve its role as a human rights watchdog and an example for how to conduct oneself as a nation, we have to keep our yard clean too.  When "rival countries" allow such egregious violations of human rights, I have to wonder if part of their agenda isn't daring us to cast the first stone.

This is all gobbledy-gook right now because my thoughts are disorganized and I have to leave soon; I'll probaby edit and update this post later.  But I think this is an important story.  I also want to plug for Amnesty International.  I know times are tight, but they do great work and, like many non-profits, they could always use extra funds to do more.  A student membership is $25 per year, and I think an adult one is $35.  Not everyone, but a lot of folks on OS, can find that money.  And if you don't have money, give the gift of advocacy--their website has instructions for writing letters of comfort to prisoners around the world, and letters of protest to the governments that would quietly do away with them.  Amnesty does great work in making sure things like this don't happen.  So do check them out if you have $35 burning a hole in your pocket, or some time to spare.