A Scottish politician has introduced a post-mortem pardon bill for thousands of people, mostly women, who were convicted of witchcraft and brought to the stake hundreds of years ago.
Natalie Don raised the proposal to "correct the historical injustice of the accusations and convictions for witchcraft."
She said she hoped the move would send a message to other countries still incriminating those accused of witchcraft, that "Scotland recognizes that what happened to these people was a heinous distortion of justice".
Don's proposal comes after an official apology from Scotland's Chief Minister, Nicolas Sturgeon, on International Women's Day in March, to all those charged, convicted or executed under the 1563 Witchcraft Act.
"Injustice stemming from her misogyny."
Scotland's Chief Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Photo: GettyImages
About 4,000 Scots were charged with witchcraft under the law by 1736. Of these, 2,500 were executed - a number five times greater than anywhere else in Europe, according to the Witches of Scotland, a group working to pardon the accused.
In her apology, Sturgen said the victims were "blamed and killed because they were poor, different, vulnerable, or in many cases - just because they were women. The injustice stemmed, at least in part, from her misogyny."
Don said the move is not just about what has happened in the past, and that she wants to point to "patriarchal and gendered approaches" and discrimination in today's Scotland.
"My view is that in order to build a fairer, more equal and more advanced Scotland, we must address the injustices of our past," Don said.
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