ISLAMABAD: The United Nations on Monday strongly criticised the Taliban for public executions, lashings and stoning since seizing power in Afghanistan and called on the rulers to halt such practices.
According to the Arab News, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, said in a report that during the previous six months alone, 58 women, 274 men and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan.
Fiona Frazer, the agency’s human rights chief in Afghanistan, said, “Corporal punishment is the violation of the convention against torture and must cease. She called for an immediate moratorium on executions.
The Taliban foreign ministry said that Islamic rules and guidelines determine Afghanistan’s laws and that most Afghans follow those rules.
The ministry said, “In the event of a tussle between an Islamic law and international human rights law, the government is obliged to follow an Islamic law.”
The Taliban began carrying out such punishments after coming to power, despite first promises of a more moderate rule than during their last stint in the 1990s.
At the same time, they’ve gradually tightened the ban on women, barring them from public spaces, such as gyms and parks, in line with their interpretation of Islamic law. The ban had triggered a world uproar, raising the country’s isolation at a time when its economy collapsed and worsening the humanitarian crisis.
The UN report on corporal punishment documents Taliban government’s practices before and after their back to power in 2021, when they seized the capital of Kabul as the United States and NATO forces withdrew after two decades of unsuccessful war.
The report said the first public flogging following the Taliban takeover was reported in 2021 in the northern Kapisa province. In that case, a man and a woman convicted of adultery were publicly lashed a hundred times each in the presence of religious scholars and Taliban authorities, it said.
In December 2022, the Taliban executed an Afghan convicted of murder, the initial public execution since they took power, the report said.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, occurred in the Farah province before hundreds of spectators and main Taliban officials.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesman, said the decision to carry out the punishment was “made carefully,” following approval by three of Afghanistan’s highest courts and Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban supreme leader.
The US report said there had been a significant increase in the number of floggings and, since November, regularity of judicial corporal punishment has been witnessed after Mujahid repeated comments by the supreme leader about judges and their use of Islamic law.
The UNAMA has documented at least 43 public lashings involving 58 women, 274 men and two boys. The majority of punishments were related to convictions of adultery.
The report said, “running away from home,” other purported offences included theft, consuming alcohol, homosexuality, fraud and drug trafficking.
