On June 3, the Sharia Court of Appeal of Katsina State in Nigeria will hear an appeal from Amina Lawal, who is fighting for her life after being convicted of adultery last August by an upper area court in Katsina because she gave birth to a child conceived with a man she had divorced two years previously.
If her appeal is rejected, Lawal will be buried up to her neck in sand, and then pelted with stones until she is dead. However, the area court ruled that the sentence could not be carried out until her child was weaned in early 2004, and Lawal has several chances to appeal.
Lawal's case is being championed by non-government organisations, such as Nigerian organisation Baobab for Women's Human Rights, and Amnesty International.
Nigeria has a history of division between the north and the south. Political power has been concentrated in the hands of the northern elite, which is also predominantly Muslim. The south of the country is largely Christian and animist in its religious views.
While Nigeria's current president, former military dictator Olusegun Obasanjo, is a southern Christian, he is backed by key northern-dominated sections of the military.
Since January 2000, the northern elite has succeeded in extending new sharia-based penal codes to 12 of Nigeria's 36 states, although the severity of the penalties varies. While sentences such as execution, flogging and amputation have been handed down by some lower courts, appeals have often overturned them.
In a joint statement released in March 2002, Baobab and Amnesty listed their concerns with the new penal codes, including cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments; failure to meet international standards of fair trial; discrimination on the grounds of gender (it is much harder to prove rape or male adultery than to prove female adultery); discrimination on the grounds of social status (many sentenced to flogging or amputation are poor); lack of judicial training of sharia judges and the procedure of the application of the death penalty.
Through local campaigns and appeals, Baobab has overturned many convictions. In a statement released in early May, Baobab activists Ayesha Imam and Sindi Meder-Gould explained: "Not one appeal that has been taken up by Baobab and supporting local NGOs in Nigeria has been lost ... All these appeals have been won in local state sharia courts — none have yet needed to go up to the federal Sharia court of appeal, from whence appeals go to the Supreme Court ... None of the [victims sentenced to death by stoning] received a pardon at all — or needed to. Either the appeals were successful or those convicted are still in the appeals process."
The statement also said: "Since the first cases ... many victims have no longer acquiesced to injustices, but actively sought help ... members of their community have spoken out about the abuse of Sharia and taken actions to protect them. When Baobab first started [in 1999], even finding a lawyer from the Muslim community willing to represent the victim was not easy."
Imam and Meder-Gould released the statement in part to contradict false petitions flying around that have claimed Lawal is soon to be executed and needs a pardon from the president.
Baobab has chosen to fight the convictions in the sharia, not the civil, legal system in order to expose the "injustices made in the name of Islam".
"Winning appeals in the sharia courts ... establishes that convictions should not have been made", they argue. "A pardon means that people are guilty but the state is forgiving them for it ... If we don't want such abuses to go on and on, then we have to convince the community not to accept injustices even when perpetrated in the name of strongly held beliefs."
The activists are also concerned that some of Lawal's "supporters" have been presenting "negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims": "Muslim discourses and the invocation of Islam have been used both to vindicate and protect women's rights in some places and times and to restrict them in other places and times — as in the present case. The same can be said of many, many other religions and discourses."
Imam and Meder-Gould also call on international supporters of human rights to stop the letter-writing campaigns to free Lawal. They are careful to explain that they are not in all circumstances opposed to such campaigns. They argue that strengthening local opposition to the laws can be hampered by the view that criticism of the laws is coming from "outside".
Baobab also argues that at a time when "we do need international support, the moral energy and indignation of the world may already have been spent, resulting in campaign fatigue". The organisation has called, however, for financial and logistical support.
BY ALISON DELLIT
From Green Left Weekly, May 21, 2003.
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