Strategy to prevent attacks on human rights activists urged

KABUL (Pajhwok): Second vice-president Sarwar Danish and a number of human rights defenders on Thursday called for creation of a mechanism for controlling violence against rights activists.

The call was made during a conference attended by senior government officials, representatives of civil society and journalists’ institutes, EU and UN officials in Kabul following an uptick in targeted assassinations of civil society activists and journalists.

Second VP Sarwar Danish, talking to the conference., said, “All of us are caught in a sensitive situation, the targets of the enemy of Afghanistan are democracy, law enforcement, election, freedom of expression and human rights.”

He said prosecutors, lawyers, journalists, women, election activists, parliament members, provincial council members and human rights defenders were all attacked by terrorists on a daily basis.

“The murder of Mohammad Yousuf Rashid shows our national figures and intellectuals are the target of our enemies, with such attacks, they want to break democracy, freedom of speech and justice, but they should know that our struggle continues.”

He asked security forces to use all their resources for security of people and take practical steps on the regard. Danish asked relevant organs to create a mechanism for dealing with security challenges.

Aziz Rahman Rafeyee, head of Committee of Human Rights Defenders, said, “We lost 23 colleagues in the last one year, we have registered 54 serious and medium level cases in which human rights defenders were targeted during the period, we were able to relatively assist in 27 cases.”

He also said a mechanism should be created for prevention of threats against human rights activists.

Shahrzad Akbar, head of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), speaking to the conference, said that threats against human rights activists were increasing with each passing day and a solution should be found to eliminate the risk.

Mds/ma