Treatment of women ‘a crime’

The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity, and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, a United Nations team of experts says.

The Taliban have rejected the allegation.

The statement by the UNappointed experts followed confirmation from the Taliban that three women were among 12 people lashed on Thursday in front of hundreds of spectators at a provincial sports stadium. It signalled the Taliban’s resumption of a brutal form of punishment that was a hallmark of their rule in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, on November 11 in Taloqan in northeastern Takhar province, 10 men and nine women were lashed 39 times each in the presence of elders, scholars and residents at the city’s main mosque after Friday prayers. They were accused of adultery, theft and running away from home.

The UN experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, said the latest Taliban actions against women and girls had deepened existing rights violations – already the ‘‘most draconian globally’’ – and could constitute gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity.

The Taliban overran Afghanistan in August 2021 as American and Nato forces were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule, and allowing women’s and minority rights, they have restricted rights and freedoms, and widely implemented their harsh interpretation of sharia.

The Islamists have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.

Women are also banned from parks, gyms and funfairs.

The experts’ statement did not specifically mention the public lashings, but said the Taliban had beaten men who were accompanying women wearing colourful clothing or without a face covering.

It urged the Taliban to reinstate the rights and freedoms for Afghan women, release activists from detention, and restore access to schools and public spaces.

The Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, rejected the experts’ statement and fired back at the UN for the ‘‘current collective punishment of innocent Afghans by the UN sanctions regime, all in the name of women’s rights and equality’’.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said this week it was seeing a spike in cases of child pneumonia and malnutrition, with the poverty level increasing compared to previous years, as humanitarian conditions plummet and the country braces itself for a second winter under Taliban rule.