NEWS: Afghan provisionary government denounces mass grave as "obnoxious atrocity"

Discussion in 'World Events' started by GB-GIL Trans-global, Aug 22, 2002.

  1. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

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    1,718
    for full story please click here

    (full translation later)
     
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  3. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

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    1,718
    Pretty mistake-ridden, but I think you get the point

    (before you do any chest-thumping or flag-waving, note that the US isn't being blamed but rather just the Northern Alliance)

    The Afghan provisionary government condemned, on Wednesday, August 21, the death of hundreds of Taliban prisoners after their surrender as being an "obnoxious atrocity" and undertook to collaborate in the official inquiry.

    The United Nations had announced, on Tuesday, that they had opened and then suspended an inquiry on this mass grave situated near the city of Shiberghan, in the North of Afghanistan, because Afghanistan could not protect the witnesses of possible reprisals. "These bodies are probably those of Taliban members and members of Al-Qaida, prisoners transferred from Kunduz province to Sheberghan at the time of the fall of the Taliban regime" explained the government in a communiqué in reference to the common grave where 900 bodies were found. "The transitional Afghan Islamic government condemns this obnoxious atrocity which is a continuation of the bloody events which have occurred in Afghanistan during the previous two decades".

    The government adds that it is ready to collaborate with organizations of defence of human rights to investigate into "these atrocities and into all the others". The United States had announced, on Monday, that they pressed Afghanistan to launch an inquiry on information published by the American weekly Newsweek, according to which more than one thousand prisoners died during their transfer after they surrendered.

    OPPRESSION

    Sayeb Fazl Akbar, spokesman of interim president Hamid Karzaï, had declared previously that these deaths had occurred before Karzaï was in power at the end of December. On Wednesday morning, during a press conference, Minister of Defence Mohammed Qasim Fahim had denied the existence in the North of the country of a large common grave in which of hundreds of Taliban prisoners were buried having died suffocated in the containers which transported them. "I do not believe in the existence of a large common grave of several hundreds of persons in the desert of Dasht-e-Leili" in Jowzjan province in the North, declared the Minister during a press conference in Kabul. "We have contacts in the province and have asked them to do a precise inquiry" added the Minister without clarifying who would handle this inquiry.

    The American Physicians for Human Rights organization (Doctors for human rights, or PHR) was the first to state this mass grave last May. PHR thinks that the common grave contains the bodies of several hundreds of prisoners arrested by the Afghan allies of the United States last year. Jennifer Leaning, one of the experts of PHR who went to the site near the city of Sheberghan, had reported that "the human remains are very easy to find". "We spoke with many witnesses, and there were indeed many bodies". The prisoners were in the hands of fighters faithful to the Uzbek war chief Abdul Rachid Dostom, member of the Northern Alliance.

    The United States explained that they had died by oppression and were buried in Daht-e-Leili, where thousands of other Taliban prisoner were interred having been killed by the Northern Alliance. The assistant spokesman of the state department, Philip Reeker, declared in answer to Newsweek's article that the United States "is examining the circumstances of the events reported in the press, quite as the other denunciations of infrigement of human rights and war crimes with our embassy in Kabul". "We sided and we continue to side with the Afghan authorities on the importance of investigating into the denunciations of violations of human rights and war crimes", he added.
     
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  5. Captain_Crunch Club Ninja Valued Senior Member

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    this is how they practice war in their part of the world, genocide is part of life for these people. Because they are US backed (until it does'nt suit them anymore) is entirely coincedental.
     
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