‘Taliban’s treatment of women a crime vs humanity’
The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, a team of United Nations-appointed experts said on Friday.
The experts’ statement followed confirmation from the Taliban that three women were among 12 people lashed on Wednesday in front of hundreds of spectators at a provincial sports stadium. It signaled the hardline Islamist group’s resumption of a brutal form of punishment that was a hallmark of their rule in the 1990s.
And on November 11 in Taloqan, capital of Afghanistan’s northeastern Takhar province, 10 men and nine women were lashed 39 times each in the presence of elders, scholars and residents at the city’s main mosque after Friday prayers. They were accused of adultery, theft, and running away from home.
The UN experts said the latest Taliban actions against women and girls had deepened existing rights violations — already the “most draconian globally” — and might constitute gender persecution, which was a crime against humanity.
The Taliban overran Afghanistan in August 2021 as American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule and allowing for women’s and minority rights, they have restricted rights and freedoms and widely implemented their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.
They have banned girls from middle and high school, restricted women from most employment, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks, gyms and funfairs.
Lashings in public, as well as public executions and stoning for purported crimes, were common across Afghanistan during the first period of Taliban rule from 1996 until 2001, when they were driven out in a US-led invasion following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Taliban had sheltered al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
The experts’ statement did not specifically mention the cases of public lashings, but said the Taliban have beaten men accompanying women wearing colorful clothing or without a face covering.
“We are deeply concerned that such actions are intended to compel men and boys to punish women and girls who resist the Taliban’s erasure of them, further depriving them of their rights, and normalizing violence against them,” it said.
It urged the Taliban to reinstate the rights and freedoms for Afghan women, release activists from detention and restore access to schools and public spaces.
The expert team, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, includes Richard Bennett, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, and Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education.
The Taliban-appointed spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, rejected the experts’ statement and fired back at the UN for sanctioning the former insurgents who now rule the South Asian nation.
In a message to The Associated Press (AP), Balkhi listed what he said amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity by the world body, including the “current collective punishment of innocent Afghans by the UN sanctions regime, all in the name of women’s rights and equality.”
Sanctions on Taliban officials and the freezing of billions in foreign currency reserves have restricted access to global institutions and outside money that had supported Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy before the withdrawal of US and NATO forces.
No country in the world has recognized the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the Taliban call their administration, leaving them internationally and financially isolated.