KABUL — The
Taliban have carried out
hundreds of human rights violations in Afghanistan since seizing power last
year, the UN said Wednesday, including extra judicial killings and torture.
اضافة اعلان
“There’s no denying that the findings of our report
are extremely serious,” Markus Potzel, acting head of the UN mission in
Afghanistan (
UNAMA), told a news conference in Kabul.
The Taliban have routinely denied accusation of
rights abuses since overthrowing the previous Western-backed government, but a
UNAMA report released Wednesday listed multiple accounts.
It documented 160 allegations of extra judicial
killings, 56 incidents of torture and ill treatment, and more than 170
arbitrary arrests and detentions against former government officials and
national security force members since August.
The most common methods of torture included kicking,
punching, and slapping, beatings with cables and pipes and use of electric
shock devices.
It documented more than 200 instances of cruel,
inhuman, or degrading punishments — including beating shopkeepers for not
attending mosque — and more than 100 cases of excessive use of force.
Since the end of the war, security has vastly
improved across the country with a huge drop in civilian casualties.
However, the Taliban — notorious for their brutal
reign of terror between 1996 and 2001 — have sharply restricted the freedoms of
Afghans, particularly women and girls.
UNAMA had 87 reports of violence against women and
girls including murder, rape, suicide, forced marriages including child
marriage, assault and battery, as well as two cases of honor killing — none of
which have been registered with the formal justice system.
Among the cases documented, were a couple who were
publicly stoned to death after being accused of having an affair.
Fiona Frazer, head
of the UN’s human rights mission in
Afghanistan, said “impunity prevails” in
Afghanistan, and acknowledged there may be an under-reporting of allegations.
She said UNAMA was “particularly concerned” about
the involvement of the Taliban’s religious police and intelligence service in
abuses.
UNAMA said more than 700 civilians have been killed
and at least 1,400 wounded in attacks mainly attributed to the local Daesh
branch, as well as unexploded mines.
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