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Oct
15
2007KARZAI REGIME PUTS SQUEEZE ON AFGHAN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP
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President “Furious” Over Criticism Of Mass Execution
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Lashing out: Karzai risks constitutional breach over rights group’s independence
Aftershocks from last week’s mass executions at Kabul’s notorious Pul-i-Charkhi prison continue to rock the embattled Western-sponsored Karzai regime. Details have begun to emerge of the bloody methods employed for the killings, along with the regime’s attempts to suppress embarrassing details.
Sources within the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) tell skyreporter that the group’s criticism of the executions of 15 condemned men by firing squad has met with a “furious” response from President Karzai and his ruling circle – who have ordered the commissioners to “explain themselves” before the regime’s supreme court.
The group's spokesmen have told journalists that Afghan courts “don’t fit the standards” of enabling accused criminals to challenge charges placed against them, or for convicted felons to secure appeals.
The UN and the Netherlands also criticised the judicial killings, although the US and its NATO allies, including Britain and Canada, have failed to follow suit.
The Karzai regime’s justice system is widely viewed as one of the administration’s weakest, most corrupt elements. It has proven incapable of conducting sound prosecutions against drug traffickers and land grabbers, much less handing down reliable sentences on capital crimes.
Though the Human Rights Commission’s role is enshrined in Article 58 of the Afghan constitution, and the legislation which created the body specifies its freedom to monitor and comment on human rights cases, Karzai’s justice ministry has ordered the AIHRC’s commissioners to appear before the supreme court next week.
Sources say the group is scrambling to assemble, on short notice, a detailed case for their appearance.
Of particular concern to the commissioners is the procedure used to carry out the executions. The condemned men were forced to kneel on the ground, together as a group and in line, where they were killed with bursts of Kalashnikov fire to the head. In some cases, the faces of the dead are said to have been disfigured beyond recognition.
The Karzai regime’s handling of the cases has provoked considerable suspicion, not least because one of the men sentenced to death, convicted kidnapper Timor Shah, mysteriously escaped Pul-i-Charkhi and remains at large. While the authorities named some of the condemned men – murderers and rapists among them – the terse, unexpected announcement of the mass executions has led to accusations of a lack of transparency in a number of the prisoners’ cases.
Karzai is said to have given his approval for the executions in the hope of allaying public anxiety over Afghanistan’s current crime wave, which has coincided with the Taliban’s resurgence. Instead, the regime’s stumbling and secretive manner of announcing the event has provoked memories of Pul-i-Charkhi’s atrocious history.
In the Communist era, firing squads worked within its walls on an almost industrial scale: some 12,000 political dissenters were summarily executed between the Communist coup of April, 1978 and the invasion by Soviet forces in December, 1979.
Today, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission is funded by the Karzai regime’s international sponsor nations. Thus far, none of the sponsors’ Kabul embassies have offered to send representatives to support the AIHRC officers in their dressing-down before the supreme court.
What are the possible repercussions to the members of the AIHRC? Isn't their being called before the supreme court a bit dramatic? Are they in any danger?
"The UN and the Netherlands also criticised the judicial killings, although the US and its NATO allies, including Britain and Canada, have failed to follow suit."
Oda said Canada respects the decision. I'm starting to feel like a alien in my own land.
Certainly the Human Rights commissioners will be feeling extremely uncomfortable right now - it's very much the "drama" of being hauled up before one of the regime's dubious legal authorities that is the point here. Karzai & Co dare not disband the AIHRC, but they'd dearly like to tame it, to prevent future criticism.
The duplicity of Karzai's foreign backers is equally shameful. Take Canada's Harper government, for instance. It was the Human Rights Commission that Harper's officials used to try to defuse the controversy over the handing over, by Canadian troops, of battlefield prisoners to regime authorities. The Red Cross wasn't monitoring the prisoners' fate - the AIHRC stepped in to perform that service.
Now that the commission's under assault, shouldn't Canada be standing up for it? Logic would dictate yes. But logic and justice are hardly the guiding lights of Western backing of the Karzai regime...
I can find no Canadian Reform/Alliance policy on human rights can you ?
From Road Warrior :
HUMAN RIGHTS
There is no mention of human rights in the Conservative election platform. That's not hard to understand if you know how Stephen Harper feels about the idea.
In 1999, he told a writer for BC Report magazine that human rights commissions, "as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society. It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff."
Wow Keith! I find that Harper's saying that is pretty scary stuff. In my mind, it would be a scarier world if we didn't have human rights organizations helping to raise our levels of awareness.
please stop calling Harper scary.
It just encourages him.
Dramatic was a poor choice of words. This unfortunate turn of events leads me to a question that I asked a few months back. Can a democracy be established in a theocracy? Perhaps it can, but it will always be each individual country's version of democracy. And that version of democracy is going to be governed by the culture, and will have aspects that we won't be able to fathom. In the Muslim world the culture is governed by their religion.
In Egypt, President Mubarak is the leader of the ruling "National Democratic Party". The government of Egypt is currently indulging in some pretty serious human rights violations. In Egypt, it is against the law to be a member of the Baha'i Faith, a religion. In our form of democracy that would be unthinkable.
I know that these statements will be unpopular. I'm used to that. My life changed radically 3 weeks after the 2001 election, when I was informed that although the ex's family's connection to the bush family had been portrayed to me as "past tense", it was really active and close.
After 9/11, when I talked about temperance and the fact that the majority of Muslims were good people and that the Muslim faith was a beautiful religion, some of the neighbors were unhappy, and the ex and a couple of his family members were perplexed. When I objected to going to war against Iraq because it would hamper our ability to eradicate al Queda and the Taliban, would impede our ability to help the Afghani's, and because it was just plain wrong, some of the neighbors thought I was a traitor, and the ex and the aforementioned family members were unhappy with me. When I refused to go to the White House for the "private tour", to have "tea with Laura", and possibly meet bush because (pointing to my foot) this big toe will never, ever, ever cross the threshold of a bush White House, some of the neighbors and the family members were baffled, and the ex was a seriously unhappy fellow. That's why he's the ex.
I believe as strongly as you do in the principles of democracy and freedom. For 2-1/2 years I walked through, and was sometimes shoved through, hell backwards holding on to those principles. I put my integrity and my value system first. I'm stronger for doing that.
I do believe that we will all be able to move from tolerance to acceptance. It just isn't going to happen overnight. It is going to take time.
That should have read, 3 weeks after the 2001 inaugeration"
Human Rights in Afghanistan, there is a verbal adoption in Human rights in Afghanistan both from the gevernment and warlords, the human rights commission has not the ability and support from Afghan government and international partners to fight for the human rights particularly for the rights of Afghan women who suffers from violence and pressures.
Human rights should be considered as a priority for the Afghan government not as part of governmental activities.
Human Right should act in each country independent, specially in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and in other trouble areas.
Human Right should be fair, honest and reflect unfairness of innocent people and to condemn it and defend them. Human Right should be fair, have Courage and be friend of innocent people, what is going on in Afghanistan, can be not compare with other countries, in Afghanistan is every things mixed and confuse, therefore I do not put much worth on human Right in Afghanistan, there is base every things on cheating!