A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...Category Archives: Taliban
Refugees forced to claim asylum in ‘jail-like’ camps as Greece tightens system
Aid agencies fear plans to scrap applications via Skype are an attempt to control and contain rather than help asylum seekers
When Hadi Karam*, a soft-spoken Syrian, decided to leave the war-stricken city of Raqqa, he knew the journey to Europe would be risky. What he had not factored in was how technology would be a stumbling block once he reached Greece.
“I never thought Skype would be the problem,” says the young professional, recounting his family’s ordeal trying to contact asylum officers in the country. “You ring and ring and ring. Weeks and weeks go by, and there is never any answer.”
Continue reading...‘We will start again’: Afghan female MPs fight on from parliament in exile
From Greece the women are advocating for fellow refugees – and those left behind under Taliban rule
It is a Saturday morning in November, and Afghan MP Nazifa Yousufi Bek gathers up her notes and prepares to head for the office. But instead of jumping in an armoured car bound for the mahogany-lined parliament in Kabul, her journey is by bus from a Greek hotel to a migrants’ organisation in the centre of Athens. There, taking her place on a folding chair, she inaugurates the Afghan women’s parliament in – exile.
“Our people have nothing. Mothers are selling their children,” she tells a room packed with her peers. “We must raise our voices, we must put a stop to this,” says Yousufi Bek, 35, who fled Afghanistan with her husband and three young children after the Taliban swept to power in August. Some around her nod in agreement; others quietly weep.
Continue reading...National Geographic green-eyed ‘Afghan Girl’ evacuated to Italy
Sharbat Gula left Afghanistan after Taliban takeover that followed US departure from country
National Geographic magazine’s famed green-eyed “Afghan Girl” has arrived in Italy as part of the west’s evacuation of Afghans after the Taliban takeover of the country, the Italian government has said.
The office of the prime minister, Mario Draghi, said Italy organised the evacuation of Sharbat Gula after she asked to be helped to leave the country. The Italian government would help to get her integrated into life in Italy, the statement said on Thursday.
Continue reading...On Helmand’s bleak wards, dying children pay the price as western aid to Afghanistan is switched off
The staff are unpaid, the drugs are running out. Gereshk hospital can only watch as tiny infants succumb to treatable diseases
Shirin has paid heavily for both Afghanistan’s conflict, and its abrupt end in Taliban victory. Three years ago her husband lost his leg when a roadside bomb hit his bus. Then in the summer the militants’ victory brought peace to her corner of Helmand, but a halt to the foreign aid funds that paid her salary as a hospital cleaner and kept the family afloat.
They fell behind on rent, were evicted from their home and began running out of food. Three weeks ago, worn down by cold, hunger and disruption, Mohammad Omar died from wounds that had never fully healed, leaving her a single mother to their four children.
Continue reading...Abducted Afghan psychiatrist found dead weeks after disappearance
Family say the body of Dr Nader Alemi, who was taken by armed men in September, showed signs of torture
One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists, who was abducted by armed men in September, has been found dead, his family has confirmed.
Dr Nader Alemi’s daughter, Manizheh Abreen, said that her father had been tortured before he died.
Continue reading...‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded
Months after Mohadese Mirzaee became Afghanistan’s first female commercial airline pilot, the Taliban took Kabul. Now a refugee in Bulgaria, she is determined to fly again
Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.
“Today, I don’t know where to go, but I’m not giving up. I’ve started applying for pilot jobs anywhere because I know I need to get back to flying,” she says by phone from the capital, Sofia.
Continue reading...‘I loved my job in the police. Then the Taliban came for me’
After a vicious beating, Fatima Ahmadi fled Afghanistan with her children for Pakistan. But her pleas for asylum in the west are met by silence
Fatima Ahmadi only stopped screaming when the Taliban held a knife to her child’s throat, and told her: “Shut up, or we will kill your son.” They had burst into the policewoman’s Kabul home one late September morning, demanding she hand over her weapons. She told the Taliban she had no guns at home, but they said she was lying, ransacked the house, then began beating her, pulling out handfuls of hair, and when she would not stop shouting, they grabbed her nine-year-old son.
The knife was pressed so violently into his throat it left a red welt, visible in photographs seen by the Observer. Ahmadi’s back was covered with bruising from an assault so vicious that she lost control of her bodily functions. The men eventually left, but with an ominous warning. “We will come back.”
Continue reading...‘It’s our lifeline’: the Taliban are back but Afghans say opium is here to stay
Despite talk of a Taliban ban, in Helmand’s poppy fields farmers and traders say they are not the only ones who depend on the drug to survive
The Taliban’s announcement that it plans to ban the production of opium in Afghanistan does not faze seasoned dealer Ahmed Khan*.
“They could not fund their war if there were no opium,” says Khan, who operates out of Baramcha, close to the border with Pakistan.
Continue reading...Women’s rights activist shot dead in northern Afghanistan
Frozan Safi, 29, is believed to be the first women’s rights defender to be killed since Taliban return to power
A 29-year-old activist and economics lecturer, Frozan Safi, has been shot and killed in northern Afghanistan, in what appears to be the first known death of a women’s rights defender since the Taliban swept to power almost three months ago.
Frozan Safi’s body was identified in a morgue in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif after she went missing on 20 October. “We recognised her by her clothes. Bullets had destroyed her face,” said Safi’s sister, Rita, who is a doctor.
Continue reading...They stayed to fight the Taliban. Now the protesters are being hunted down
Women’s rights activists fear for their lives as Afghanistan’s new rulers infiltrate, detain, beat and torture groups of protesters
A month ago, Reshmin was busy organising protests against Taliban rule in online groups of hundreds of fellow women’s rights activists. Now the 26-year-old economics graduate must operate clandestinely, dressing in disguise and only demonstrating with a select few.
“If things continue like this, there will be no future for women in Afghanistan. It’s better if the future never arrives,” says Reshmin, who spoke to the Guardian using only her first name, which means “silk” in Farsi, out of security concerns. “Each time we go out, we say farewell because we might not make it back alive.”
Continue reading...Reclusive Taliban supreme leader makes rare public appearance
Haibatullah Akhundzada said to have visited religious school in Kandahar, confounding rumours of his death
The Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, made a rare public appearance in the southern city of Kandahar, Taliban officials announced on Sunday, contradicting widespread rumours of his death.
Akhundzada, known as the leader of the faithful or Amir ul Momineen, had not been seen in public even after the Taliban’s August takeover of the country, giving rise to the speculation.
Continue reading...Time running out for LGBTQ+ Afghans hiding from Taliban, warn charities
Large numbers linked to previous administration are stranded in Afghanistan, with calls for the UK to broker rapid mass evacuation
Calls for the government to speed up the evacuation of gay, lesbian and transgender Afghans intensified on Saturday after the first LGBTQ+ group arrived safely in Britain but left many behind to face an uncertain fate.
The group of 29 is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, the Foreign Office said, hours after the Taliban announced LGBTQ+ rights would not be respected.
Continue reading...Gunmen kill at least three at Afghan wedding to stop music being played
Killers said they were Taliban but government denies responsibility and says two of them have been arrested
Gunmen presenting themselves as Taliban attacked a wedding in eastern Afghanistan to stop music being played and killed at least three people, the government has said.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday that two of the three attackers had been arrested, and denied they were acting on behalf of the Islamist movement.
Continue reading...First group of LGBT+ Afghans fleeing Taliban arrive in the UK
Students and activists in group that British foreign ministry hopes will be ‘the first of many’ in coming months
A group of LGBT+ Afghans has arrived in Britain, the first since the Taliban’s return to power in August caused panic among gay and transgender Afghans, who feared persecution and even death under the Islamists’ rule.
The evacuation of the 29 Afghans is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, hours after a Taliban spokesman said LGBT+ rights would not be respected.
Continue reading...‘Gunmen killed a midwife who refused to leave a woman in labour’
Zahra Mirzaei pioneered ‘groundbreaking’ maternity services in Kabul, but has been forced to flee. She says she won’t stop fighting for dignified care for Afghanistan’s women and girls
When Afghanistan’s first midwife-led birth centre opened in the impoverished district of Dasht-e-Barchi in western Kabul this year it was a symbol of hope and defiance.
It began receiving expectant mothers in June, just over a year after a devastating attack by gunmen on the maternity wing at the local hospital left 24 people dead, including 16 mothers, a midwife and two young children.
Continue reading...‘The most difficult journey of my life’: an Afghan family’s escape to the UK
One of just six female judges who have so far managed to reach Britain speaks of fleeing Kabul and finding refuge in Manchester
The day the Taliban arrived in Kabul, Dina* went to her office in the city’s law courts as normal. It was deserted. “Only the cleaner was there,” the 41-year-old supreme court judge remembers. “The cleaner said: what are you doing here? Go home!”
Dina gathered as many legal papers and personal documents as she could carry and drove back to the four-storey home she shared with her husband and three children. There, she scanned in the most important bits of paper and burned the lot on her roof terrace. It was painful watching evidence of everything she worked so hard to achieve going up in flames.
Continue reading...‘Countdown to catastrophe’: half of Afghans face hunger this winter – UN
An economic crisis aggravated by conflict and drought have caused a collapse in food security since the Taliban takeover
More than half of Afghanistan’s population is facing acute hunger as the country has been thrown into one of the world’s largest food crises.
Almost 23 million Afghans will be hungry due to conflict, drought and an economic downturn that is severely affecting livelihoods and people’s access to food as a harsh winter looms, the UN has warned; an increase of nearly 35% compared with last year.
Continue reading...‘We planted a seed’: the Afghan artists who painted for freedom
The Taliban has whitewashed Kabul’s political murals – and those who created them have fled into exile
Negina Azimi felt shock and fear like never before when she heard that Taliban fighters had entered Kabul on 15 August. As an outspoken female artist in Afghanistan, she knew they would come for her.
“We heard reports that the Taliban might raid houses. I was scared because I live in a very central neighbourhood and every room in my house is adorned with the kind of art the Taliban won’t approve of,” she says, referring to paintings that feature messages about women’s empowerment and are critical of the Taliban’s atrocities.
Negina Azimi, who is now in a refugee camp in Albania with others of the ArtLords collective. They are now planning an exhibition
Continue reading...Taliban ‘forcibly evicting’ Hazaras and opponents in Afghanistan
Human Rights Watch has logged illegal seizures of land and homes then given to Taliban supporters
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes and land by Taliban officials in the north and south of Afghanistan, in what amounted to collective punishment, illegal under international law, Human Rights Watch has warned.
Many of the evictions targeted members of the Shia Hazara community, while others were of people connected to the former Afghan government. Land and homes seized this way have often been redistributed to Taliban supporters, HRW said.
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