By Mehtab Safi and Mahsa Elham
Two days after UN human rights experts called on the Taliban to immediately halt public corporal punishments, the Taliban continued to brutally punish those it believes have violated its laws.
On Sunday, December 18, the Taliban publicly flogged 22 people in the sports stadium of Sheberghan in Jawzjan province and another seven in Kapisa province. At the flogging in Sheberghan, Mawlawi Gul Mohammad, the Taliban’s deputy governor in the province made it clear the Taliban did not care what the international community says. An eyewitness at the stadium reported that Mawlawi Gul Mohammad said that it was more important that the Taliban “apply hudud and qisias on the people and society.”
“One of these girls who was whipped is named Horiya,” says a source from the Jawzjan provincial court, who asked not to be identified. This source says that Mawlawi Hilal Balkhi, the former Taliban head of information and culture in Sheberghan, wanted to marry her but she refused. So they imprisoned her for the crime of moral corruption and then flogged her in public.
To make sure the public ordeals were well attended, the Taliban announced the spectacles in city mosques in Sheberghan on Saturday. More than a thousand people gathered in the stadium to watch the spectacle, several residents tell Zan Times. One eyewitness to the public punishment tells Zan Times that the Taliban flogged 22 people, including three young women, on charges ranging from running away from home, having sex outside of marriage, drinking alcohol, and stealing. Each person was whipped between 25 to 39 times, says the source, who asked not to be identified.
The accused were put back onto two minibuses and sent to prison after the whippings, which lasted three hours in total on Sunday morning, the source said. And, following procedures established at previous public punishments, Taliban gunmen surrounded the stadium and forbade anyone from recording the event. “The Taliban had moved their forces in six high-rise buildings around the stadium so that no one would take pictures or make video of the scene,” the source says, adding that three people were arrested on suspicion of taking photos.
In addition to the flogging in Jawzjan, the Taliban publicly whipped seven people, including three women, in Nijrab district of Kapisa province on Sunday morning. An eyewitness to this punishment tells Zan Times that the Taliban charges included running away from home, having sex outside of marriage, and buying and selling drugs. “The Taliban court flogged four men on the charge of selling drugs and three women on the charges of running away from home and having sex, with each flogged 35 to 39 times,” explains the source.
Those punishments on Sunday came after more on Thursday, when the Taliban whipped 12 people, including a woman, in the sports stadium of Firozkoh city, the capital of Ghor province, and arrested four people for filming and taking pictures of this public punishment.
On Friday, December 16, United Nations human rights experts called for an immediate halt to the execution of public punishments in Afghanistan. These experts have specifically expressed concern about the unfairness of the Taliban’s trial process, in which the accused does not have a defense lawyer, and have asked the Taliban to immediately stop the execution of any cruel and humiliating torture and punishment. The United Nations has pointed out that Afghanistan is one of the member countries of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Treatment or Punishment, which prohibits any form of torture and degrading treatment.
