Not even five weeks have passed since the Taliban took control of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. From the promise of a different government from the one that prevented unaccompanied women from leaving the house 20 years ago. But the testimonies gathered by three NGOs – Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Torture – tell another story: “The Taliban are not serious when they talk about respect for human rights,” he said. Sinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty International Deputy Director for South Asia.
According to data collected by NGOs, there are still more than 10 thousand people who risk being arrested, tortured or killed by the new government. “This is why Amnesty supports the need to resume an evacuation plan. Negotiating with the Taliban to carry out operations inside Afghanistan and asking the country, and its neighbors, to keep the borders open”, says the spokesman Riccardo Noury. It is not just about people who have collaborated with foreign forces, like the interpreters, “but about women, journalists and activists who in recent years have tried to get Afghanistan back from the hole it had sunk into with the first Taliban government. “.
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While the governments of the countries that had taken part in the military campaign, together with the NGOs, drew up lists of people to be evacuated, the Taliban did the same, with the opposite objective: to hunt down people considered “enemies”. Like Parwiz, real name, brutally beaten after he took part in a women’s demonstration on September 8: “They arrested and tortured him, breaking his arm, in a police station. Before releasing him, they made him wear new clothes. because the ones she wore at the time of her arrest were full of blood, “a friend of hers told Amnesty International.
Or like Abdul, a journalist who is hiding from the formation of the new government. “Since the end of the republic I have not gone to work. Since then our editorial office has been closed”, and adds that the directors, journalists and other information operators have been informed that they will only be able to work in compliance with the laws of the shari ‘ a and of the norms and rules of Islam. While women weren’t even allowed to show up at the office, “they were humiliated and insulted.”
“Even if most of the people on their lists are in hiding, like Abdul, or have been evacuated, the risk is still high for family members or whoever they find in the wanted man’s home,” explains Noury. It is fear Kobra, a teacher and spokesperson for human rights, who left the country in August but still fears for his relatives and friends because “the Taliban keep asking my neighbors questions about me”.
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Those of Parwiz, Abdul and Kobra are just a few stories, “the tip of the iceberg of a catastrophic situation that gets worse every day”. Most of the testimonies included in the report come from Kabul, where it is easier to reach respondents. Noury explains that before the Taliban took power there were also reports of massacres from the province of Ghazni, 150 kilometers from the capital, and soon after in Panshir, where militias blocked supplies and humanitarian aid. But now it is difficult to find information as most of the people have gone into hiding and Koranic students have cut off the internet in different areas of the country.
The stories of these people, but also the inability to reach others, show the need to keep a United Nations mechanism active in the country that monitors reports, collects and stores evidence of war crimes such as cutting off supplies in the Panshir, region where he fought resistance, torture and murder: just some of the human rights violations committed by the Taliban, in front of which the international community must react.
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