Beauty queens to the rescue?
(I swear, I'm not making this up. Someone might be, because it seems like a Cindy Sherman fever dream.)
Backing Off on Death-By-Stoning Verdicts
Oct 30, 11:00 am ET
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria said it would never allow the implementation of a series of Islamic sharia law death-by-stoning verdicts, in an apparent bid to reassure beauty queens threatening to boycott this year's Miss World pageant.
Junior Foreign Minister Dubem Onyia singled out the case of Amina Lawal Kurami, a 31-year-old Muslim woman whose sentencing to death by stoning for adultery sparked worldwide outrage.
"Amina Lawal will never, never be stoned to death," Onyia said a news conference on Tuesday. "The federal government will not stand by to let any citizen of this country be dehumanized."
About a dozen states in northern Nigeria have extended sharia law from civil to criminal cases since President Olusegun Obasanjo was elected in 1999.
Miss World organizers in Nigeria have found themselves caught up in the sharia controversy, with both human rights activists and radical Islamic groups calling for a boycott.
Miss World contestants including those from France, Canada, Belgium, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Norway said they would boycott the December 7 pageant in Abuja after a northern Nigerian court upheld Kurami's sentence.
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