A video has emerged of what appears
to be a young Afghan woman, married against her will, stoned to death for
trying to elope with another man.
In a graphic, 30-second video, which
has not been verified, a group of men are hurling stones at what seems to be a
woman reciting the Islamic creed of faith from a neck-deep pit.
A group of people are watching the
stoning as the men throw rocks with increasing speed, without betraying any
visible emotion. The video cuts before the woman is killed.
The incident occurred in Ghalmeen, a
village outside the capital of the central Afghan province of Ghor, which is
under the control of armed opposition groups, according to the provincial
governor, Seema Joyenda.
The woman, previously identified as Rokhshana, 19, was
stoned last week, accused of adultery with a man much younger than the person
she was forcibly married to.
According to Joyenda, who has staff
members from the village, Rokhshana first ran away several years ago to Iran
after her family tried to marry her off to an old man. After they brought her
back, they forcibly married her off to another old man. When she ran away this
time, she did so as a married woman, and was punished with stoning, Joyenda
said.
Local officials, including the
police chief and the head of Ghor’s department for women’s affairs, Masooma
Anwari, have blamed the Taliban for the killing, claiming that the sentence was
decided in a Taliban court.
However, activists in Kabul warned
against jumping to conclusions. Wazhma Frogh, co-founder of the Research
Institute for Women, Peace and Security, said her contacts in Ghor had told her
the perpetrators were not Taliban but rather local tribal leaders.
She said that while she did not mean
to exonerate the Taliban of their atrocities, local officials were known to
blame the insurgents when they could. “Usually, they are putting it on the
Taliban to cover up their own kind. Of course the Taliban do these things, but
we can’t deny that tribal leaders also do the same things,” she said.
Joyenda condemned the stoning but
was ambiguous in assigning blame. The culprits, she said, were armed groups,
without specifying who they were.
Meanwhile, though Joyenda is one of
only two female governors in Afghanistan, she has herself been criticised for
allowing local authorities to trample on women’s rights. In September, she
defended a sentence sanctioned by government judges to deliver 100 lashes to a couple for adultery.
“Their punishment is based on sharia law and will teach others a lesson,” a
spokesman for the governor told Reuters.
The ambiguity about who stoned
Rokhshana perhaps reflects the fact that the Taliban is not a homogenous group.
The name is used to label everything from armed fighters to sympathetic clerics
and elders.
(the guardian)
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