Taliban Arrests Head of Justice and Development Party

Lynne O'Donnell said on Wednesday that she was forced to apologize and published everything, which the Taliban had dictated to her, on her Twitter profile.

The FP columnist left Afghanistan for Islamabad on Wednesday.

According to her, the Taliban even made a video of her to project that she was not forced to apologize.

Lynne O'Donnell had published a series of tweets in which she apologized for her reporting about recent developments within the Taliban. She had written, “l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders. This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture.”

This is not the first time that the Taliban has pressurized foreign journalists in Afghanistan. In the past few months, the Taliban has arrested two western journalists in Kabul. Among others, Andrew North, was one of the journalists detained by the group.

After Taliban took control of RTA, they changed the logo of the media organization which was earlier designed with keeping in mind the colours of Afghanistan’s flag.

Facebook has not provided any details about the reasons for the suspension of RTA’s pages.

After the Taliban’s takeover last year, Facebook suspended many of the previous government’s official pages. Pages of Ministries of Defense, Interior, Finance, Education, Energy and Water, and Government Media and Information Center had been suspended.

The GDI, published a video of the IS-K member depicting that he was advertising for IS-K on social media under the alias Abu Khalid.

The IS-K member introduced himself as Ziaullah from Paghman district of Kabul province in the video. He confessed that he was arrested by the Taliban intelligence agency before conducting an attack on a Shia Mosque.

Zaiullah said that he was recruited by IS-K through Telegram communication app.

Detailing the findings, UNAMA’s scathing report on Wednesday stated that many of the directives issued by these two bodies limit the human rights and freedoms of Afghans, in particular women and girls.

The report also stated that officials of the GDI have been involved in perpetrating human rights violations against individuals in their custody, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and ill-treatment, as well as arbitrary arrests and detentions. The report recounted 217 instances of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments carried out by the Taliban since 15 August 2021 and 118 instances of excessive use of force by the group between 15 August 2021 and 15 June 2022.

UNAMA stated that the Taliban must investigate these violations, perpetrators held accountable, and ultimately, incidents should be prevented from reoccurring in the future. “It is beyond time for all Afghans to be able to live in peace and rebuild their lives after 20 years of armed conflict. Our monitoring reveals that despite the improved security situation since 15 August, the people of Afghanistan, in particular women and girls, are deprived of the full enjoyment of their human rights,” said Markus Potzel, Acting Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan.

The report also detailed extrajudicial killings of individuals accused of affiliation with armed groups, as well as cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishments and extrajudicial killings of individuals accused of “moral” crimes and the excessive use of force by Taliban officials. At least 160 extrajudicial killings, 178 arbitrary arrests and detentions of former ANDSF and government have been reported despite the announcement of a general amnesty by the Taliban.

At least 18 extrajudicial killings, 54 instances of torture and ill-treatment and 113 instances of arbitrary arrest and detention have been reported of individuals accused of affiliation with self-identified “National Resistance Front”, stated UNAMA.

The report added that the erosion of women’s rights has been one of the most notable aspects of the Taliban to date. Since 15 August, women and girls have progressively had their rights to fully participate in education, the workplace and other aspects of public and daily life restricted and in many cases completely taken away.

“The education and participation of women and girls in public life is fundamental to any modern society. The relegation of women and girls to the home denies Afghanistan the benefit of the significant contributions they have to offer. Education for all is not only a basic human right, it is the key to progress and development of a nation,” said the UN envoy.

On the issues of freedom of speech, the report said that in the 10 months since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the group has limited dissent by cracking down on protests and curbing media freedoms, including the arbitrary arrest of journalists, protestors and civil society activists and the issuing of restrictions on media outlets. Human rights violations also affected 173 journalists and media workers, 163 of which were attributed to the Taliban, stated the UNAMA report.

The report also said that despite an overall, significant reduction in armed violence, between mid-August 2021 and mid-June 2022, UNAMA recorded 2106 civilian casualties (700 killed, 1406 wounded). The majority of civilian casualties were attributed to targeted attacks by the armed group self-identified “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province” against ethnic and religious minority communities in places where they go to school, worship and go about their daily lives.

UNAMA stated that the human rights situation has been exacerbated by a nationwide economic, financial and humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale. It called on the international community to continue its support for the people of Afghanistan by ensuring that urgent humanitarian and basic needs are met. Further, it stated that the international community has an obligation to ensure that sanctions, while they remain in place, do not have a negative impact on human rights.

UNHCR in its latest report on Afghan refugees in Iran, called on Tehran to restart the Census process for the Afghans who have been left out of this programme. The organization added that they had advised Iran not to deport Afghans who have fled the war, but it continues to do so.

The Iranian government had started distributing temporary residence documents to Afghan refugees in April. This process was completed on June 30th and the interior ministry of Iran had announced that the programme will not be extended further.

UNHCR quoted the Iranian government as saying that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 Afghan refugees have entered Iran in 2021. This organization said that the social and economic conditions in Afghanistan has caused Afghans to continue to immigrate to Iran in 2022.

The UNHCR estimates that 274,000 Afghans who recently entered Iran, including those who went to the country in 2021, will remain in Iran till the end of 2022.

UNHCR added that till the end of June, the return of 173 Afghan refugees had been facilitated. “This shows a 75 percent decrease as compared to 706 returnees during the same period in 2021,” said UNHCR.

The organization added that instability and the fragile security situation in Afghanistan have reduced the interest of Afghans to return to their country.