Amina Lawal Kurami (born 1973) is a Nigerian woman. In March 2002, an Islamic Sharia court (in Funtua, Nigeria in the northern state of Katsina) sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence.
Her conviction was overturned and she has since remarried. Baobab for Women's Human Rights, an NGO based in Nigeria took up her case, which was argued by Nigerian lawyers trained in both secular and Sharia law. Amina's lawyers included Hauwa Ibrahim, a prominent human rights lawyer known for her pro bono work for people condemned under Sharia law.
In their successful defense of Amina Lawal, lawyers used the notion of "extended pregnancy," arguing that under Sharia law, a five year interval is possible between human conception and birth.[1] (Five years prior to the date of her daughter's birth, she was still married to her husband.)
From Nigeria, the official response in 2003 was that no court gave a stoning order on Amina Lawal. Reports that she was ordered to be stoned as a consequence of an order by the Supreme Court met the following response:
In every material sense, the report is totally untrue. The Nigeria Supreme Court has not even heard the case, so the question of passing judgement or upholding the death sentence does not arise ... The embassy strongly condemns this unfounded and malicious report calculated to ridicule the Nigerian judicial system and the country’s image before the international community. There is no iota of truth in the whole presentation.[2]
The affair exposed civil and religious tensions between the Christian and Muslim regions of Nigeria. The sentence also caused widespread outrage in the West, and a number of campaigns were launched to persuade the Nigerian government to overturn the sentence. Several contestants of the Miss World beauty contest, to be held in Nigeria in 2002, pulled out of the contest to protest against Amina Lawal's treatment. The Oprah Winfrey show had a special report on Amina Lawal and encouraged viewers to send protest e-mails to the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States - over 1.2 million e-mails ensued.
Several Western human rights organizations (including at least one branch of Amnesty International and an Oprah Winfrey-sponsored enterprise) made use of the Amina Lawal case as a major opportunity to raise funds: the typical fundraising appeal featured a picture of Amina Lawal, sometimes holding a baby, and inaccurately proclaimed that Lawal's scheduled execution was only a few days or weeks away, exhorting: "Don't Let Them Stone Her to Death!" Several petitions urged, "Save Amina's Life!" Such fundraising appeals typically did not mention the fact that Amina Lawal was in no danger of being put to death nor did they mention that her case remained pending in the Nigerian court system, with several levels of appeal remaining. Indeed, some of these campaigns were still going on while Amina Lawal was living in London in the U.K. Several NGO's promoting women's rights in Nigeria, including BAOBAB, called for a halt to the various international petitions and letter-writing campaigns, which they believed were counterproductive and provided false information about the case and about Shariah law.[3]
On 25 September 2003, Lawal's sentence was overturned by the Katsina State Sharia Court of Appeal and was freed. The five-judge panel stated that she was not given "ample opportunity to defend herself" in the previous proceedings.
Notes
External links
- Religious Tolerance web-site
- Amnesty International 2002 and update on her release November 2003 [1]
- CNN summary 2004
- BBC Report 2003
- Nigerian Embassy’s Statement On The Fate Of Amina Lawal
- Oprah Magazine Report 2002
- BAOBAB Women
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