Rama Yade Pens Letter To Iranian Woman Facing A Stoning Death For Alleged Adultery: “France Is Accountable For Your Fate”

Rama Yade is upset about the situation

Rama Yade, the moderate-conservative French Secretary of State for Sport and the country's former human rights minister, pens an open letter to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (letter originally in French): "In the cell where the Iranian judiciary has kept you, you may not hear all the global tumult that the injustice of your conviction has had. Your face and your name is now tattooed into our consciousness: they are in the heart of all those people campaigning for human rights and their universality apply to all men and women. Today, I think your first son Sajjad, whose determination helped draw world attention to the barbarity of the ruling that strikes you, shows his courage that Iranian youth will continue to fight for asserting its commitment to the rule of law and its values of justice and humanity."

Secretary Yade continues her letter to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani: "Throughout the world, intellectuals, politicians, public figures, and thousands of anonymous activists have demanded your release. France has mobilized as a single citizen to assert your right to prevent the ignominy of your scheduled sentence. The President of the Republic has made a lot of your personal matter: France, by its voice, is responsible for you, and strongly denounces the use of the death penalty whose persistence, at the dawn of the third millennium, is a dismal anachronism. Like the plight of women, your judicial system is medieval."

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

More: "In France, summer has ended, and hundreds of thousands of children make their way back to classes. I think of them in addressing you. In classrooms, teachers educate them that their rights do not decline by background, and that gender equality is at the heart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where they learn that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person and that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. They are very young, Sakineh, to tell them of the ignoble fate that the Iranian justice system has assigned you. The struggle that unites us to you is for the future of all children in Iran, France and elsewhere. Also, I would tell you how you became so dear to all who defend you, how we became essential that you find your son, how I long that you are returned to the serenity that was removed from you."

UPDATE: Due to international outcry, the Iranian government halted Ashtiani's sentence of death by stoning for adultery (which she was convicted of in 2006). However, she still faces allegations of collaborating in her husband's murder (charges which emerged just weeks ago).

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