Afghans, encouraged by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s decision to execute seven convicted criminals this month, are calling for a return to Taliban-era public executions to deal with a surge in crime.
Rights groups and some of the governments funding post-Taliban Afghanistan recoiled at the executions, the first batch in a year, saying shortcomings in the notoriously inefficient and corrupt judicial system cast doubt on the legitimacy of trials.
But Afghans wholeheartedly welcomed them, with one newspaper praising the move in an editorial entitled “Thank you, Mr. President.”
PHOTO: AFP
A council of women in the capital late last month called on Karzai to go one step further and have death sentences — usually by firing squad or hanging — carried out in public, as they were under the 1996-2001 Taliban regime.
The president said at the time this was not something he would support. But at the weekend he told reporters he would consider public executions for those behind an acid attack on schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar last week.
If advised by the Supreme Court and religious clerics, “I will accept public execution so people can see those who have carried out such barbaric acts ... are executed in front of the world’s eyes,” he said.
Meanwhile the religious council for provinces in western Afghanistan last week issued a statement calling for, among other things, public executions “as a lesson” to criminals.
This would “put horror and fear in the hearts of criminals and those who plan crime, and crime will decrease,” said the council’s spokesman, Farooq Hussaini.
A preacher at a prominent mosque in the capital and a lecturer at Kabul University, Aiaz Niazai, said Afghanistan needed the death penalty now more than ever.
The Koran says executions should take place in “a gathering of people” so people learn from the punishment and are assured that the crime will not happen again, he said.
That such executions were carried out by the Taliban does not necessarily make them wrong, the cleric said.
“We do not count everything the Taliban did as negative,” he said.
Public executions also reassure people that the right person is punished for a crime, said Kabul resident Mohammed Naiem.
“If they are hidden, as Karzai says they should be, it is possible for it to be carried out on someone who is against the government or for another political issue,” he said.
Government employee Ahmad Zia said the future of Afghanistan depended on strict punishment with its people “volatile” after 30 years of war and suffering from high levels of illiteracy.
“Yes, 100 percent they should be punished in front of people,” he said. “This is so others should learn and stop bad works. With hidden executions only some people might even know that it has even happened.”
Zia acknowledged there may be failings in the judicial system and said the courts should not be able to judge on political cases as they were not independent.
Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai would not be drawn on public executions or allegations of weaknesses in the system but said the death penalty was necessary in a place like Afghanistan.
“In a country where 90 percent of the population is illiterate, this is a lesson for those involved in committing crime,” he said.
“The international community understands the rate of crime, especially abduction, murder and terrorism, is going up day by day,” he said.
About 120 more sentences of capital punishment were awaiting Karzai’s final go-ahead, Hashimzai said.
The UN, the EU and Norway have condemned the recent executions, with the UN’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, saying there was a grave risk that innocent people may be put to death.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to