After Taliban's Pages Get Banned on Facebook, Twitter Urged to Do Same

According to the sources, Taliban raided Hussaini’s house and office and detained him and his guests. Sources added that Hussaini is being arrested for the second time by the Taliban. Hussaini’s relatives said that they aren’t aware of his whereabouts.

Hussiani has been one of the Taliban’s critics and over the past few months. He has called for the formation of an inclusive government and has demanded rights for the Shia community in Afghanistan.

Earlier, Hussaini had criticised the Taliban and said that there was no representation of Shias in the Taliban government. Hussaini had also stressed that their demands for Shia rights have not been considered.

He had said that recognition of Shia jurisprudence is the demand of the Shia community of Afghanistan and the Taliban should recognize it. Jawad Hussaini believed that the lack of formation of an inclusive government is a crisis in the country and stated that the Taliban government is a one-party, one-ethnic group government.

The Taliban has not yet commented on his arrest.

The arrest comes even as UNAMA on Wednesday, July 20th , released a report condemning the Taliban’s arbitrary arrests and killing of their opposition. Later, the Taliban’s spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid in a tweet denied the report and called it baseless accusations.

However, evidence show that arbitrary arrests continue to happen and the raid at Hussaini’s house is an example.

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.