ANTERO DE ALDA Photography Recent Works
|
killer stones
The stones cannot be too large to cause immediate death, but neither should they be too small, in a way that they cannot even be considered a stone. From article 104, of the Iranian Penal Code
Inspired by the three fundamental laws of celestial mechanics, by Johannes Kepler (on the movement of planets), Sir Isaac Newton published in 1687 a book called ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematic’, in which he describes the theory of universal gravitation and establishes the classical mechanical laws: anywhere on Earth, its gravitational pull gives weight to objects and makes them hit the ground, when dropped in the air.
Newton equally formulated three laws: 1 – inertia: the whole body remains in its state of rest or in rectilinear uniform motion, unless it is forced to change that state by forces applied on to it; 2 – dynamics: the motion change is proportional to the impressed driving force, and is produced in the direction, in a straight line, in which that force is exerted; 3 – action-reaction: to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction, with the same intensity.
Years later, the French philosopher Voltaire first published in ‘Elements of the Philosophy of Newton’ (1738), a story that supposedly was told to him by Catherine Barton, the niece of the English physicist, in which she stated that Newton conceived the theory of gravity, after an apple had fallen on his head. The legendary episode was corroborated in part by archaeologist William Stukeley, in a biographical book that became known as the ‘Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’ (1752). Ultimately, Newton didn’t die by the weight of the fruit from the apple tree in his backyard. He outlived it, moreover, for four long decades: he died in London in 1727, at a respectable age of 84 years old.
Sakineh Ashtiani (43 years old), sentenced to death by stoning. photo AP-Associated Press
More than three centuries elapsed, the Islamic courts serve up to Newton's law to kill adulterous women. Killer stones that torture are not ripe fruit from the orchards of Iran.
____ The death penalty by stoning was restored in Iran in 1979, shortly after Reza Pahlavi was deposed and following the establishment of Ruhollah Khomeini as the country’s leader. Since then, more than 150 people (mostly homosexuals and adulterous women) were sentenced to death by stoning. This practice still remains very popular in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, age 43, was first condemned to 99 lashes in May 2006, under the charge of having committed adultery after her husband's death. Imprisoned in a jail at Tabriz, two years after, her sentence was aggravated to death by stoning. Her execution came to be scheduled for July 2010, but the requests for clemency from her son Sajad Ghaderzade and from the international community led to a postponement. In September, the sentence was commuted and the authorities in Tehran announced that they would hang her instead: to divert the implication that there was a giving in to international pressure, the Iranian court decided to accuse her of involvement in the murder of her husband, which in Iran leads to hanging. According to the International Committee Against Stoning, an NGO based in Germany, the execution could occur this Wednesday, November 3rd, but has now come to disavow it, avouching that «it can happen at anytime». |
