Fears grow over reports of persecutions
Amnesty, UN and various news reports point to instances of Taliban carrying out killings, vengeance acts and persecutions
KABUL/GENEVA: Taliban fighters tortured and killed members of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan after recently overrunning their village, Amnesty International said, fuelling fears that they will again impose a brutal rule, even as they urged imams to push a message of unity at the first gathering for Friday prayers since the capital was seized.
Terrified that the new de facto rulers would commit such abuses, thousands have raced to Kabul’s airport desperate to flee following the Taliban’s stunning blitz through the country. Others have taken to the streets to protest the takeover - acts of defiance that Taliban fighters have violently suppressed.
The rights group said that its researchers spoke to eyewitnesses in Ghazni province who recounted how the Taliban killed nine Hazara men in the village of Mundarakht on July 4-6. It said six of the men were shot, and three were tortured to death.
The brutality of the killings was “a reminder of the Taliban’s past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring”, said Agnes Callamard, the head of Amnesty International.
Also, the Taliban are going house-to-house searching for opponents and their families, according to an intelligence document for the UN that deepened fears that Afghanistan’s new rulers were reneging on pledges of tolerance.
They have been conducting “targeted door-to-door visits” of people who worked with US and Nato forces, according to the document by the UN’s threat assessment consultants seen by AFP. The report, written by the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, said militants were screening people on the way to Kabul airport.
Afghans at risk have no clear way out: UNHCR
Most Afghans are unable to leave their homeland and those who may be in danger “have no clear way out”, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson of the UN High Commis
sioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reiterated its call to neighbouring countries to keep their borders open to allow people to seek asylum in light of what she called the “evolving crisis”.
“The vast majority of Afghans are not able to leave the country through regular channels,” she said. “Those who may be in danger have no clear way out.”
More than 18,000 people have been flown out of Kabul since the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital, a Nato official said on Friday.
Woman TV news anchor stopped from working
An Afghan woman journalist has said she was barred from working at her TV station after the Taliban took control of the country, and pleaded for help in a video posted online.
Wearing a hijab and showing her office card, well-known news anchor Shabnam Dawran said “our lives are under threat” in the clip on social media. Dawran has worked as a journalist for six years in Afghanistan for stateowned broadcaster RTA.