Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
March 6, 2023
Amnesty International has urged the UN Human Rights Council to address “relentless abuses” by the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan.
In a statement announcing its new report, the rights watchdog demanded that the UN council “establish an independent investigative mechanism in Afghanistan at the earliest opportunity, with a focus on evidence preservation to pursue international justice.”
It cited a “wave of arrests” and “unlawful detentions” of women’s rights defenders, academics, and activists.
Amnesty International also cited fresh evidence of attacks on civilians in the Panjshir region where military resistance to the Taliban has been historically strong, “including abductions and enforced disappearances” that “are still being committed as the Taliban’s conflict with the National Resistance Front (NRF) continues.”
It cited its own investigation into mass killings of ethnic Hazaras by Taliban fighters in the Ghazni, Ghor, and Daykundi provinces where perpetrators have evaded justice.
It said the preservation of evidence “is key to pursue international justice.”
Persistent abuses and denial of the most basic rights for women and minorities have continued and even accelerated in the 18 months since the Taliban swept to power as the U.S.-led international troops withdrew and the UN-backed Afghan government collapsed and fled, leaving millions of Afghans already battered by decades of conflict to fend for themselves.
Just this week, international officials have been frustrated by the Taliban’s refusal to allow women and girls to attend school as universities reopened in Afghanistan.
“It is time for the international community to follow up their repeated public statements with concrete action,” Amnesty quoted its secretary-general, Agnes Callamard, as saying.
“The international community should act soon to establish a UN-mandated international fact-finding and evidence preservation mechanism to ensure independent investigations and prosecutions are possible,” she said. “The current accountability gap is allowing grave violations and abuses in Afghanistan to continue unabated, and it must be urgently closed.”
The UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva, is the only global intergovernmental rights organization but has no legally binding powers over UN member states.
With reporting by AP
ESPNCricinfo: Despite dim prospects for an Afghanistan women’s team being formed so long as the Taliban remain in power, Afghanistan’s status as an ICC Full Member is unlikely to be affected. The matter is set for wider discussion at the next ICC board meetings in Dubai in March, when the ICC’s working group on Afghanistan will provide an update on progress in the country. ESPNcricinfo understands that the group, headed by the ICC’s deputy chair Imran Khwaja, will push for not penalising Afghanistan’s status and shed greater light on the difficulties the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) faces in pushing to develop the women’s game. 
Tolo News: Universities in the cold areas of the country started classes on Monday with the absence of female students. In December of last year, the Ministry of Higher Education announced that the female students are suspended from going to universities until further notice. The female students meanwhile expressed criticism over the closure of their universities. “15 of Hout (March 6) has been one of the hopeless days, I as an Afghan girl witnessed it as a very bad historic day,” said Sofia, a student. “It even caused us to get depressed and get concerned that we should remain at home,” said Shabana, a student. 
Tolo News: The European Union’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson, said that the EU is “not supporting armed resistance, neither politically, nor in other ways.” Niklasson made the remarks at a press conference in Kabul on Sunday. 
Livemint: Under the previous government, the women were granted one-sided divorce helping them to escape abusive and drug-addicted husbands. Some of these women remarried to start a new life, but the extreme imposition of Islamic law by the Taliban is making these women vulnerable to imprisonment or other types of violent punishments for the crime of adultery, a report from Washington Post said.