UN report flays Taliban rights violations against women in Afghanistan, March 9, A UN report accused the radical Islamic regime in Afghanistan of violating women's rights with "unabated severity," including mass abductions and forced prostitution. The report cited testimony from refugees about the large-scale abduction of women and girls by militia of the ruling Taliban movement during fighting last year in the northern and central parts of the country. UN rapporteur Kamal Hossain provided testimony about ethnic Hazara and Tajik women being rounded up in trucks and taken from the regions of Mazar-e-Sharif, Pol-e-Khomri and Shamali to neighbouring Pakistan and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
The Taliban militia, committed to a radical fundamentalist form of Islam, swept to power nearly four years ago and now controls most of Afghanistan, although fighting against rival movements continues in parts of the country. Since coming to power, the Taliban has barred women from attending schools or working outside the home. Women can only appear in public hidden in head-to-toe robes. Routinely targeted by the world community for abusing women's rights, the Taliban on Wednesday marked International Women's Day for the first time, bringing around women to a Kabul women's hospital in buses with dark curtains drawn.
But the UN report insisted the Taliban continued to enforce its severe edicts against women's participation in public life "with unabated severity.
Hossain gave evidence that non-Afghans, including Pakistanis and Arabs, who are fighting alongside the Taliban, are also involved in the rights violations against women and ethnic minorities. Fighting in Afghanistan intensified last year in the central highlands particularly in Bamyan and in the Shamali Plains north of Kabul. Hossain related evidence of summary executions of non-combatants by Taliban forces, arbitrary detentions and forced labour.
Comment on the report made by a Christian mission stationed in the region: Finally, the truth! The tragic truth is coming out. Afghans and real friends of Afghanistan who have known about these horrendous atrocities and have been bewildered by the international community's apathy and silence, praise the UN Human Rights Rapporteur for his integrity, courage and sincerity to reveal the truth about the misery and tyranny facing the Afghan people, be it Pashtoon, Tajik, Hazara or Uzbek. We also know who are puppet-masters behind these radical Talib, Pakistani and Arab groups terrorizing our people, specially the defenseless women of Afghanistan.
