A woman sentenced by a court in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after being gang-raped by seven men.
She was handed a sentence of 200 lashes and six months in jail after being found guilty of speaking to the media about the crime and indecency.
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Woman punished because she spoke out about her being defiled by 7 men
According to the account of the story reported by the Middle East Monitor, the 19-year-old Shia woman was in the car of a student friend when two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area, where she was raped by the seven men.
She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in a car of a man who was not related to her.
Commentators say Saudi Arabia’s law dictates that a male family member must accompany a woman at all times in public.
The Press TV reports that the rapists were surprisingly sentenced to five years in prison. And it is unclear why the rapists were handed this light sentence, considering the fact that they could have faced the death penalty.
Lawyer for the woman, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, appealed to the Saudi General Court after the sentence was handed down.
However, the court reviewed the sentence, increasing it to 200 lashes. The court held that the woman had spoken to the media. The lawyer was also banned from the case; his license was confiscated, and was summoned to a disciplinary hearing.
Such a case is not only peculiar to Saudi Arabia, many women around the world face similar situations.
Back home here in Nigeria, a Senator has said that the gender and equality opportunities bill was turned down by the National Assembly, on the grounds that sections of it will allow women to ignore their marital responsibilities and freely engage in prostitution, lesbianism and other immoral activities.
And one asks what is truly the rational behind such a statement?
The Chibok girls are still missing two years after their abduction and the question is will they ever be found?
All these deliberations form the basis of this second edition of the Nigerian poets series. Below are poems that lend their voices to the teeming number of Nigerians and people around the world speaking against the ill-treatments meted out to women, as well as other societal ills.
1. On Chibok by Dami Ajayi
Mr Ajayi
Shekau is Jay-Z
singing I’ve got girls, girls, girls, girls.
Pointed rifles and aides flanking him
on CNN.
A neanderthal in turban,
brazen and psychotic,
he holds the world to ransom,
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call it terrorism.
He kills in the name of a God
Leaving this god neither anonymous,
nor blameless.
Bombs burst open
in market places,churches, parks, mosques
with seething effervescence.
We condemn his gore and guts
whilst our impotent imperialists masturbate
in clandestine spaces.
The nation grows amok,
anomie twinkling persistent blips.
The nation has been sabotaged
and they wave a flag of indifference,
then a flag of denial, then a flag
of amnesty, a flag of deliberation
in the face of carnage.
Bombs, new land mines,
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detonated by strapped suicide bombers.
They die by diffusion and hope to f**k
virgins in heavenly suites.They shout God is great.
But we already know.
Man’s wickedness is greater
and God does not speak for man’s wickedness
when He called us after his image.
God is no poet;
he does not fancy imagery,
he would have said: man, look into a mirror
what you see is God.
Gory images spread across newspapers.
Everyday a new death.
Not famine or
Malaria, not automobile mishap
or Filaria Not old age,
the good death or dying,
Not even cancer, the new worm
or Diabetes, death from being too sugary–
it is suicide motivated multiple homicides. Happy go lucky bombers
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who blast their themselves
in a frenzied rant about the greatness of God.
Yes, man’s wickedness is greater.
Look into craters and see blood flowing,
tributaries connecting Buni Yadi to Izghe to Gamburu,
coalescing within the confines of Lugard’s eternal mistake.
Then there was Chibok.
Chibok was inevitable, like death itself.
Chibok of yellowy dust,
bucolic and sleepy
like an octogenarian’s afternoon.
Chibok happened upon Chibok
and the town’s name became its tragedy.
Insurgents razed the town
stirring and stoking it with petrol and vitriol.
The world was silent when they were taken
it was denied, their kidnap was first amnestic,
then remembered in slow bursts.
Who says hashtags can’t fan revolutions?
catch a fire my friend.
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But who keeps the vigil lamp burning?
Who keeps the dreams drumming?
Who sits as sentry at the fish-mouth Of Sambisa?
Who keeps the memory fresh
by Watering planted placards under Falomo bridge?
Who?
This poem carries every name,
every face,
every trace of tear,
every ounce of fear.
This memory will not decay.
Dami Ajayi is a medical doctor currently specializing in psychiatry. But this is just one of his interests. He’s also a writer, a poet, a co-publisher of Saraba literary magazine and a music/film critic.
2. A new sermon by Chika
cHIKA ON mIC(1)
I am on my way to Ikoyi, in the bus the preacher says:
“You are a woman, Forty three years old, Yet you are not married, What kind of God do you serve?”
So I opened those words, and found a woman, gang-raped by men,still beaten for adultery in Saudi, her humiliation coming full circle, and in the middle of that circle I found, laws aimed at reducing women to something less, and when I read those laws, I found men born of women, unable to stand the sight of their mothers and sisters free, Strong and equal, and when I opened up those men, I found me, Seated in the back of the bus, unable to stand up and say to the preacher:
” A woman not being married, is not a sign of failure” “Women deserve everything men are given” “A woman is not less than a man”.
Onwuasoanya Chika Jones is a published poet and an engineer. His first collection of poems was published in the Anthology ‘Verses from the Niger’ in 2015. He won the national poetry slam ‘War of Words’ in 2013 and has won several awards in Nigeria and Africa. He is a regular columnist for several online platforms. He is the current president of Lyriversity a literary group for youths in Nigeria.
3. Presidential right to Flight by Shittu Fowora
You’d be surprised, the things that fascinate some oldies and how a Father’s prophecy of aves has come to fore. for his travels, a peasant honcho daily lopes through the entire plumage of flights: Air Arabia to Swiss Air.
Peregrinators are easily fascinated by the stretch of runways; by floodlamps of airports, by the smell of tarmacs and airstrips will you be surprised to find Tuvalu Tahiti,Vanatu, Haiti,Panama,Kiribati,Palau and Nauru on his itinerary notes?
do not be surprised, therefore that someone will hit these countries and you may not call it ‘globe-trotting’ or ‘galivanting’ lets call it one of those things they say it is: search for FDI, bilateral agreements, regional collaborations and cross-border treaties, debt relief,loot recovery.
…But a prophet worked two birds one soared; won even, a prophet worked two birds ….If he’s your brother, the bird, bid him farewell if he’s your employer,the bird, be glad he’ll not be there to supervise your sweat. If he happens to be your President,the bird remember,the Father told you so.
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News Source: NAIJ, 9jaTales