Stone Cold Murder

Iraqi Teens Stoned for Being Emo

Human Rights – After Iraq’s Moral Police released a statement condemning the “emo phenomenon” and those that have an “emo” appearance because it signals “devil worshiping,” religious extremists in Baghdad are literally taking aim at Iraqi teenagers who choose to express themselves in this fashion. At least 90 teenagers have been stoned to death in the past month for the alleged “crime.”

The Moral Police also announced that it plans to eliminate the “emo phenomenon as soon as possible since it’s detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger.”

“They wear strange, tight clothes that have pictures on them such as skulls and use stationary that are shaped as skulls. They also wear rings on their noses and tongues, and do other strange activities,” said Colonel Mushtaq Taleb al-Mahemdawi.

According to activists, religious extremists have been taking matters into their own hands and disposing of the “dangerous” teenagers. Allegedly a group of armed men said to belong to one of the “most extremist religious groups in Iraq” took dozens of teenagers to a secluded area “stoned them to death, and then disposed their bodies in garbage dumpsters across the capital.”

“First they throw concrete blocks at the boy’s arms, then at his legs, then the final blow is to his head, and if he is not dead then, they start all over again,” one person who managed to escape told Al-Akhbar.

To make matters worse, the Ministry of Education has given the Moral Police permission to enter Baghdad schools to pinpoint students that fit the “emo” appearance. Though many teenagers across the globe express themselves in this fashion, it seems that Moral Police are attaching a stigma to the practice because it falls under the category of “western” dress. In fact, it has been reported that some students were arrested recently because “they were wearing American jeans or had Western haircuts.”

Although the Interior Ministry has not disclosed the number of teenagers who have been killed, Hana al-Bayaty of Brussels Tribunal, an NGO, indicates that the number ranges “between 90 and 100.”

According to Al-Bayaty, the majority of the killings “appear to have been carried out by extremist Shia militias in mostly poor Shia neighborhoods.” She also indicated that she suspects that “there’s complicity of the Ministry of Interior in the killings.”

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s prominent Shia cleric, has criticized the stoning, calling it “an act of terrorism.”

Read more at Al-Akhbar.

The Video below is the full Al-Sharqiya report in Arabic: