Miss World Hits Nigeria, the Country Where Women Are Stoned to Death

The Miss World contest travels to Nigeria, the country where an illiterate young woman is waiting for the day when she will be buried up to her neck in the earth and a baying crowd hurls rocks at her head, smashing her skull, hopefully only after she has fallen unconscious. Her crime: becoming pregnant after being raped.

The Miss World contenders were indeed worlds apart from 31-year-old Amina, hunched barefoot in her village nursing her sick baby, Wasila, while the President of the Miss World Contest, Julia Morley, declared that “We are here to put Nigeria on the world map of beauty”.

Becoming pregnant after she was raped, Amina Lawal is waiting for her second appeal to be heard. If it is unsuccessful, she will be stoned at the beginning of 2004 or as soon as her baby is weaned, whichever of the two comes sooner.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru