In Kandahar’s Ahmad Shahi Stadium on Tuesday, the Taliban publicly flogged nine people who had been found guilty of thievery and “sodomy.”
A media house tweeted, “The Supreme Court said in a statement that nine people were punished in Ahmad Shahi Stadium in Kandahar on Tuesday on charges of robbery and ‘sodomy’.”
Residents of Kandahar and local officials were there for the whipping. The inmates had 35–39 whiplashes, according to Haji Zaid, the provincial governor’s spokesperson.
Shabnam Nasimi, a former policy advisor to the UK’s Minister for Refugees and Minister for Afghan Resettlement, said that the Taliban allegedly severed the hands of four persons in a football stadium in Kandahar.
She tweeted, “The Taliban have reportedly cut off the hands of 4 people in a football stadium in Kandahar today, accused of theft, in front of spectators. People are being lashed, amputated & executed in Afghanistan, without fair trial and due process. This is a human rights violation.”
Following a directive from the hard-liners’ supreme leader, the Taliban has resumed public executions and public flogging of convicts in spite of worldwide outrage. UN experts demand an immediate end to all forms of severe, cruel, and degrading punishments after being greatly offended by public execution and the fact that flogging has resumed in Afghanistan.
In what appears to be the first public execution carried out by the Taliban since capturing control in August 2021, a man was publicly executed by the Taliban on December 7, 2022, in Farah city, Farah province. Executions and public floggings are against universally accepted norms that forbid torture and other forms of harsh, inhumane, or humiliating treatment or punishment.
Afghanistan is a signatory to both the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which forbid torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. These punishments are exceptionally offensive and degrading since they are performed in front of the public.
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