The Taliban-run Supreme Court revealed that the Afghan Taliban carried out four public executions this month in the western Afghan districts of Badghis and Nimroz despite growing international outrage.
“I condemn the four public executions that took place today in the Afghan provinces of Badghis (2), Farah, and Nimroz and reiterate that these executions, along with the Taliban’s public use of corporal punishment, are blatant violations of international law and must end immediately,”
said Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the state of human rights in Afghanistan.
Since being restored to power in 2021, the Taliban have resumed and intensified their cruel application of corporal and capital punishment in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law.
Moreover, as per the most recent information published by the Taliban Supreme Court, a minimum of 456 individuals, including 60 women, have been publicly flogged in 26 provinces in March 2024. A total of more than 798 individuals, including 140 women, have also been subjected to public lashings during the last three years.
According to the article, the Taliban have given 176 death orders, 37 stoning punishments, and four incidents where people were executed by having a wall collapse on them, a punishment used in early Islamic history.
The UN and other foreign organisations have emphasised due process, judicial openness, and fundamental rights for all Afghans while constantly urging the Taliban government to stop these forms of punishment.
The UN called the practice of public executions in Afghanistan a “clear human rights violation” in a previous report. The United Nations condemned the incident, stating that despite international calls to respect human rights norms, the de facto authorities have reinstated public executions, floggings, and other kinds of corporal punishment since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021.
The international community and human rights experts have expressed serious concerns about these practices. The UN further stated that the public execution is indicative of a larger trend of Afghanistan’s decline in human rights.
Bennett told the UN Human Rights Council in February that the Taliban is using fear and brutality to govern and tighten its grip on Afghan society.
“Intensifying taliban repression, increasing discrimination against women and girls, diminishing civic space, violations against ethnic and religious groups, and a troubling rise in corporal punishment and other forms of violence clearly indicate that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating worse,” he said.