Iran Can No Longer Accept Afghan Refugees, Says Iranian Interior Minister

Barakzai, who is still in the hospital, said that she will return to her tent and continue her hunger strike. Barakzai told Afghanistan International on Tuesday that her condition had improved compared to the day before, but that she was still in hospital due to an irregular heartbeat.

The LGBT rights activist said that she had entered the eighth day of the hunger strike and would return to the tent soon.

She began a hunger strike last week to recognize gender apartheid and to protest the difficult situation of LGBT people in Afghanistan.

Last year, Mohra Barakzai went on an 11-day strike in Malmö, Sweden, to highlight the situation of LGBT people in Afghanistan, and spent 150 days in a sit-in tent.

One of Barakzai's demands is to transfer LGBT people from Afghanistan to other countries.

She said that LGBT people in Afghanistan are at risk of facing death, many of them are homeless, they are not given jobs, and some of them are threatened by the Taliban and even their families.

On Monday, Diana Daneshwar, another LGBT activist in Pakistan, was taken to hospital after a five-day hunger strike.

Daneshwar’s relatives told Afghanistan International that they found her unconscious at her home around noon on Monday when a number of people from her community visited her.

Diana Daneshwar has been on a hunger strike in a Pakistani city since Thursday, September 26, to recognise "sexual and gender apartheid and genocide of the Hazaras”.

Younus Mohmand, the deputy head of the chamber, asked the chargé d'affaires of the British embassy for London’s support in release of the foreign exchange reserves of the Taliban's central bank.

Bakhtar News Agency reported the meeting took place in Kabul on Monday. The deputy head of the Taliban's chamber of commerce promised the chargé d'affaires of the British embassy, who is based in Qatar, that the Taliban has taken steps to improve relations with the world.

Britain does not recognise the Taliban government and has stated that normal relations between the Taliban and London is conditional on the observance of human rights, especially women's rights.

Younus Mohmand told the British envoy that Afghanistan is a bridge between South and Central Asia .

This is not the first time that Taliban officials have insisted on the release of Afghanistan's frozen assets. Earlier, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's foreign minister, had repeatedly asked for the release of the assets.

After the Taliban’s return to power, more than $9 billion of Afghanistan's assets were frozen in European and American banks.

On November 21, 2022, the United States established a trust fund in Switzerland to protect the asset and transferred $3.5 billion of Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserves to the fund.

The purpose of the fund is to strengthen financial and monetary stability and to confront Afghanistan's economic crisis.

Also, this fund helps to provide sufficient financial resources to prevent a liquidity crisis, pay for electricity imports, printing new passports and banknotes, among others.

Robert Dickson has not released a statement about his meeting. On Friday, September 28, he met with a number of Afghan investors and entrepreneurs in Kabul.

"Strengthening the private sector provides opportunities for women oppressed by the Taliban," he wrote.

Abdul Kabir also said that they are trying to make Afghanistan self-sufficient in the field of electricity production.

"The group wants stability and order in the region and will fight against groups that disrupt security," the Taliban's deputy prime minister was quoted as saying on Monday, according to a Taliban statement.

It seems that the Taliban’s deputy prime minister reacted to the statement of the countries of the region about the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Munir Akram Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations announced at a Security Council meeting last week that the Afghan Taliban are facilitating the activities and attacks of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

TTP militants use Afghan territory to carry out attacks inside Pakistan on a daily basis, Akram added.

Abdul Kabir said at a conference on investment opportunities in the energy production sector in Kabul that for the Taliban, "the management of water resources is a priority, and the Islamic Emirate intends to pave the way for the implementation of regional projects”.

The Taliban's deputy prime minister added that Afghanistan will soon become a regional trade and transit hub, and Afghanistan's domestic products will enter international markets.

The Taliban has been able to improve their trade relations with some Central Asian countries in the past three years. However, due to sanctions and the inclusion of the group on the UN list of terrorist organisations, the group has failed to improve political and economic relations with other countries.

However, Abdul Kabir also called for the lifting of restrictions on the Taliban's banking system.

The organisation said on Monday that the man's death sentence was carried out in secret without the knowledge of his family.

The Afghan prisoner was arrested in 2019 on drug-related charges, the Haalvsh Human Rights Organisation said in the statement.

The Afghan man has been identified as "Nesar Ahmad Rahmati" and had been transferred from the general ward to solitary confinement on Sunday.

No information has yet been released about the trial and prison conditions of these Afghans, and so far, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iranian state media have not commented on the execution.

On Sunday, the Iran Human Rights Organisation (IHR) announced the execution of 14 prisoners, including two Afghans, in Shiraz Central Prison.

According to a list compiled by the Taliban, these books are mainly written in the fields of literature, history, human rights, constitution, democracy, and the Shia sect.

A copy of these lists has been obtained by Afghanistan International.

The Taliban has called books "undesirable" in the library of the Ahmad Shah Massoud Cultural Foundation, the library of Amir Ali Sher Nawai Women's High School, and the library of Sultan Ghiyasuddin Ghori High School.

It is said that these libraries belong to the education department of Herat province.

These books in various fields such as politics, human rights, history, literature, culture, religion, and Shiite sect are mainly written in Persian.

According to the lists prepared by the Taliban, the group's officials, under the name of the "Supervisory Board of Libraries of Schools in Herat Province", have deemed these books "undesirable".

At the end of the lists, the Taliban delegation wrote that the books have been handed over to the head of the libraries "until further notice”.

The Taliban has also attached pictures to the list that show that the bookshelves in these libraries have been sealed.

According to the list, the Taliban have sealed 667 titles of books in only three libraries in Herat. Sources said that the Taliban's surveillance and censorship goes beyond public libraries.

In the list published by the Taliban, at least three books by Abdul Latif Nazari, the Taliban's deputy minister of economy, can also be seen.

These books have been written by Nazari under the titles of "Citizenship Rights in Afghanistan", "The Concept of Democracy", and "Globalisation and Security in the Middle East". The Taliban has also called the Pashto translations of Nazari's works "undesirable" and sealed them.

After returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban began efforts to censor and remove books containing content that contradicts the group's ideology and strict interpretation of religion.

The Taliban's actions to restrict citizens' access to books come as a result of increasing restrictions on publishers, sellers, and importers of books.

In May this year, the Taliban's Ministry of Information and Culture announced that the "Book Evaluation Commission" had reviewed 20 books in a meeting and had not granted publication licences to some of them.

Mahajer Farahi, the Taliban's deputy minister of information and culture, also said that the group would prevent the publication of books that are against "Islamic values and traditions of Afghan society”.