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Statement by Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-Abroad Representative:  According to official sources at Ninawa Criminal Court, the four people charged with the stoning of Du'a Khalil Aswad on 7 April 2007 have been sentenced to death. The decision was made on 27 March, just three weeks before the third anniversary of Du'as murder. It is reported that two of the convicted men are Du'a's brothers. Du'a was stoned to death in front of almost 2,000 men; with Iraqi police maintaining "law and order" while the stoning took place. The authorities knew about the atrocity, but did not prevent it.

This month in two consecutive events, the Saudi King and a Saudi woman took on the Wahabi religious establishment. A simple gesture by the king and a poem by the woman set off another clash between the palace, which is trying gradually to take some steps toward liberalization, and an intransigent religious establishment that is fighting them every inch of the way, particularly on issues related to women’s rights.

Thirteen women are murdered in "honour killings" by their own relatives every day, according to Rana Husseini, a human rights advocate and journalist who has devoted her career to fighting the barbaric and widespread practice. "I'm documenting the cases of women, their stories, the fact that they lived on this earth and that someone deprived them the right to live," Husseini told IPS. An honour killing occurs when a family feels that their female relative has tarnished their reputation, according to Husseini, author of the recently released book "Murder in the Name of Honor".

While Saudi women might, just might, be escaping the vicious tentacles of religious police, Maldivian women are not far from being subject to a vagarious moral police force. In fact, women without burgas and long sheaths of black cloth are already looked down upon and unfairly viewed as loose women. Are we going backwards while our ‘role-model’ the nation that some of strive to recreate, is shifting gears?