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2004-12-11 Afghanistan/South Asia
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AFGHANISTAN: Progress on human rights but concerns remain
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| Nothing's ever quite good enough, is it? |
On the eve of the universal day of human rights there are still major human rights violations in Afghanistan, but some improvements have been made in the post-conflict country.
Abdul Sabour Babai was celebrating his freedom two weeks after he was released from a private jail in the northwestern Faryab province. The 35-year-old returnee was arrested and tortured by a local commander when he tried to get back his confiscated land in Pashtun Kut district on the outskirts of Maimana, the provincial capital of Faryab. Sabour returned from the western city of Herat where he spent three years as an IDP [internally displaced person]. The father of five left Pashtun Kut following the increasing number of violations by local commanders after the hardline Taleban was ousted late 2001. However, when he came back he found out that the rule of the gun was still in place in his isolated, mountainous home town. "We were told that all the commanders had been disarmed but that was not true," Sabour told IRIN. "I had all the documents and when I insisted on getting my own land back, the commander put me in his private jail and after three weeks of detention the local elders helped me to run away," he said. Sabour said local police could not do anything to stop the commanders from harassing and intimidating civilians.
As Kabul marks the International Human Rights Day on Friday, rights activists at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said the top human rights concerns in the country, still reeling from decades of conflict, were; land grabbing from farmers by local commanders; arbitrary killing and torture; and the general state of impunity. Moreover, violence against women continued unabated. But despite existing challenges, AIHRC believes there has been some improvement in the state of human rights in the country this year.
| Mighty generous of you to admit it. Mighty generous... |
"There have been some encouraging signs of improvement in the human rights situation in Afghanistan this year, however, the situation on a number of issues remains concerning," Nader Nadery, a commissioner of AIHRC, told IRIN on Thursday in the capital, Kabul. According to Nadery, in the first six months of 2004 land grabbing accounted for 31 percent of all violations that AIHRC had investigated, while currently that figure has dropped to 18 percent. Some improvement has also been observed regarding the issues of torture, forced migration and forced marriages. 
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Posted by Fred 2004-12-11 9:29:04 PM||
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