(This is a follow up to my earlier item: The price of a drink: Iranian sentenced to hang for drinking alcohol.)

More horrific human rights abuses in Iran, and more lack of reporting from the mainstream media. Two sisters – identified only as Zohreh and Azar – have been convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death by the Iranian Supreme Court. Just in case anyone doesn’t realize this, the practice of stoning is excruciatingly painful for the victim.

Adultery is a crime punishable by death in Iran, in accordance with the regime’s interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. The two sisters deny the charge.

Zohreh and Azar have already received 99 lashes for “illegal relations.” Yet last week they were tried again for the same crime, and convicted of adultery on the evidence of a videotape that showed them in the presence of other men while their husbands were absent. The video does not show either of them engaging in any sexual activity at all.

Amnesty International has issued a statement condemning the miscarriage of justice and the sentence. But the silence of the mainstream Western feminist organizations and of the so-called liberal media commentators is deafening.

Powerful liberal institutions such as The New York Times can make a difference if they bother to report properly on these matters. See, for example: The NY Times and the Saudi Gang-rape Victim Story: Better Late than Never. (That was a follow-up to a piece of over six months earlier: Saudi gang-rape victim gets 90 lashes for International Women’s Day.)

After the Times finally reported on that story, Hillary Clinton and others raised it, and the Saudi regime commuted the sentence. While not having the same influence over Iran as it does over Saudi Arabia, that is no excuse for Western liberals for not trying.