Amnesty condemns stoning in Mali

Amnesty International condemned Tuesday the gruesome and horrific act of the stoning of an unwed couple in Mali. The latest killing is yet another human rights abuse committed by the combatants who control the north of Mali, and illustrates the climate of fear that armed opposition groups have created within the areas they control," said Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Africa in a news release here. Amnesty International has documented incidences of abuses carried out by armed groups in the north of Mali on people to change their behaviour in accordance with their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. The new behaviours being enforced include dress codes for both women and men, the banning of all music except religious music and forbidding of people of opposite sexes if unmarried to sit next to each other on a bus or to walk the streets together. The imposition of these new behaviours has been accompanied by intimidation and physical violence including deliberate and arbitrary killings, the group said.