Violence against women

Press Statement

14^th February 2014

The Ethiopian woman in Khartoum, Sudan, who was gang raped by seven men, has been denied by the Attorney General the ability to make a formal complaint of rape and thus instigate a full investigation. She has instead been charged with adultery which carries the potential sentence of death by stoning.

In August 2013, a young Ethiopian woman was lured to an empty property and then brutally gang raped by a group of seven men. The incident was filmed by perpetrators but was then distributed six months later in January 2014. Both the perpetrators and the Ethiopian woman have been arrested and initially investigated under Articles 153 and 154 of the Sudanese criminal code which relate to the making and distribution of indecent material and indecent behaviour.

Reports indicate Islamic Republic judiciary officials continue to subject prisoner Maryam Shafi’pour to undue pressure and abuse in order to extract false confessions. 

More than one million people around the world have signed a petition against a new law in Afghanistan on the grounds that it offers the perpetrators of violence against women de-facto immunity. Referred to as the “anti-women gag rule”, the law has been denounced as the culmination of a series of belligerent attempts by the conservative government to undo the momentum in women’s protection initiatives over the last decade.  Yet in Kabul, there are few signs that the law was ever part of any such deliberate strategy, pointing towards the need for a more nuanced approach to the fault lines of gender politics at the dawn of post- NATO Afghanistan.

06^th February 2014

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) request the attention of the international community regarding the state of women’s rights in the Maldives after the President’s veto of a bill containing limits on marital rape.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) are highly concerned at the state of women’s rights and freedoms in the Republic of the Maldives.  WLUML sees the recent veto of the sexual offences bill by President Yameen an indicator that Maldivian women’s dire situation.

The sexual offences bill was vetoed on the grounds that it contravenes Shari’a, owing to the bill’s criminalisation of certain instances of marital rape.  In fact, the bill falls seriously short of criminalising marital rape all together, only doing so in four instances: while a case for dissolution of the marriage is in a court; while the divorce filed by either husband or wife is pending; sexual intercourse to intentionally transmit a sexually transmitted disease; and during a mutually agreed separation (without divorce). 

WLUML do not endorse the passing of the bill in its current state as it contains many problematic elements, particularly those that criminalise same-sex relations.  However, we express our alarm that the limited legal recourse for women contained in this bill was deemed controversial enough for it to be vetoed. This decision - which comes 18 months after a 15-year old rape victim was sentenced to flogging - suggests that women in the Maldives are living with serious restrictions on their freedoms and are treated unequally by the law.