A detailed report by UK based think tank The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution has published a detailed 125-page report on the potential genocide of Afghanistan’s Christians.
The several thousand remaining Afghan Christians, “are already being subjected to what international law defines as ‘crimes against humanity’” according to Lindisfarne. “This includes those arrested being subjected to multiple forms of torture including beatings, electric shocks, burnings, suffocation, simulated drowning, sexual violence and mock executions. Some have been extra-judicially killed by the Taliban. There are also reports of the Taliban judicially sentencing people to death for apostasy and blasphemy.
“The report also warns that there is a real prospect of genocide – the total and deliberate eradication of the entire Christian community in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Let’s be clear we are not just saying ‘this is terrible – it must be genocide’. The 1948 Genocide Convention requires not just evidence of “killing members of that group” or inflicting on them “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” – it also requires evidence that the perpetrator intended to do so.
“However, this report from the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution does provide clear evidence of this:
• The obliteration of other historic religious minorities due to the Taliban’s actions against them. Theis includes the flight of almost the entire Hindu and Sikh population which before the first (1995-2001) period of Taliban rule is estimated to have been around 200-250,000 strong. The last remaining members of Afghanistan historic Jewish community have also fled. Both because of how they were treated during the first period of Taliban rule.
• The Hedaya – the main shari’a textbook the Taliban are following requires the execution of any sane adult male who leaves Islam within three days, women are to be subjected to lifelong imprisonment and regularly beaten, while children are to be imprisoned until they come of age when the adult penalty is to be applied.
• The Taliban have spent the last five years building up a considerable database on Afghan Christians. They have done this by regularly stopping people at checkpoints, seizing their phones and downloading data. This has caused huge cultural upset in this conservative Islamic society as it lets the Taliban see photos of other men’s wives and daughters. However, the Taliban have justified doing this on the grounds that they are collecting “intelligence” on those they regard as enemies of the regime. Clearly the Taliban are collecting this data for a purpose and at some point intend to act on it.”
The report includes spefic acts of persecution tha if proven would be regarded as crimes against humanity:
- Killing Afghan Christians because they are Christians
- Encouraging and legitimising the killing of Christians as apostates by others
- Arrest, imprisonment and interrogation of Afghan Christians because they are Christians
- Torture, including beatings, electric shocks, burnings such as with a heated iron, suffocation,simulated drowning, solitary confinement, sexual violence and mock executions
- Legally requiring other Afghans to report Afghan Christians or face a sentence of two yearsimprisonment
- Forced marriage of girls – the Taliban have introduced laws forcibly marrying unmarried women and girls to Taliban fighters, which they justify on the grounds that this will bring about better compliance with Islamic practice. There are reports that Christian and Sikh families have been targeted in this manner and forced to give up their daughters at gunpoint to the Taliban.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on Afghan Christians conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.