Ukraine parliament votes to join International Criminal Court

LONDON: The UK must accept more refugees from Afghanistan and show greater compassion toward people fleeing the Taliban, the UN special rapporteur for Afghanistan told The Independent.

Richard Bennett’s appeal came almost four years since the Taliban takeover of the country, with Afghan women and girls having suffered under a series of draconian restrictions since 2021.

Afghans are coming to the UK “because they are persecuted and life is very hard for them,” he said: “Nobody wants to be a refugee.”

Under a Home Office scheme for vulnerable Afghans, Britain pledged to accept 20,000 refugees from the country over a five-year period.

Figures from December showed that 34,940 people had arrived from Afghanistan, with almost 26,000 having been given accommodation.

Due to the risk of Taliban reprisals, many refugees resorted to reaching the UK via small boat from Europe.

Bennett, who was banned by the Taliban from entering Afghanistan last year, said: “They are refugees who have been persecuted in a war and now by an oppressive regime. They are truly the classic definition of a refugee.”

He added: “I come from New Zealand, and we had a prime minister who asked people to be kind. So, that’s what I would do, too — to be kind to Afghan refugees, please.”

Bennett has produced several reports detailing the suffering of Afghan women and minorities since his appointment to the UN Human Rights Council in 2022.

The Taliban accused the UN’s findings last year of being “based on prejudices and anecdotes detrimental to interests of Afghanistan and Afghans.”

At the recent Herat Security Dialogue in Spain, Bennett described the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan as “hell.”

There are women “tortured in prison, sometimes sexually abused, beaten and threatened,” he told The Independent, adding that the UN’s rights authorities are trying to “understand the scale and the gravity of the Taliban’s rule.”

He highlighted the Taliban’s latest edicts, including one banning women from appearing near uncovered windows.

“It shows how women and girls are not considered the equal of men and boys, but rather inferior human beings. This is not a situation that any country, any other country can accept in the 21st century,” he said.

Since retaking power in Afghanistan, the Taliban has banned most girls aged over 12 from formal education.

Women have also been barred from parks and prevented from traveling long distances without a male guardian.

The Taliban’s positions on women’s rights is undermining its attempts to gain international recognition, with no country having established formal ties with Afghanistan.

The US and UK should only engage with the Taliban on condition that “measurable improvements” are seen in human rights practices, Bennett said.

“Use that leverage that the international community has — be it political or financial or sanctions — a range of actions can put pressure on the Taliban. And to be clear, I am not against dialogue,” he added.

“I have always been for dialogue, and the US and the UK need to consistently raise their concerns about human rights when they engage with the Taliban — not skirt around or avoid it.”

BANGKOK: Myanmar’s junta chief said the country would hold an election in December or January, the first in the war-torn nation since the military staged a coup in 2021.
“We are planning to hold the election in December 2025 or ... by January 2026,” General Min Aung Hlaing was quoted as saying in the state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar published Saturday.
The vote would be “free and fair” he said on Friday during a state visit to Belarus, adding that 53 political parties had “submitted their lists” to participate.
“We also invite observation teams from Belarus to come and observe” the slated election, he said during a meeting with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk.
The Myanmar military seized power in 2021, making unsubstantiated claims of massive electoral fraud in 2020 polls won resoundingly by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
It has since unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent and as fighting ravages swathes of the country had repeatedly delayed plans for fresh polls that critics say will be neither free nor fair.
The junta is struggling to crush widespread opposition to its rule from ethnic rebel groups and pro-democracy “People’s Defense Forces.”

In 2022, the junta-stacked election commission announced that Suu Kyi’s NLD would be dissolved for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law.
Junta-appointed foreign minister Than Swe in December told delegates from five neighboring countries at a meeting in Bangkok that “progress was being made” toward an election in 2025.
The junta in January extended an already-prolonged state of emergency by six months, eliminating the possibility of long-promised polls until the second half of the year at the earliest.
Southeast Asian foreign ministers in January told the junta to prioritize a ceasefire in its civil war over fresh elections during a meeting in Malaysia.
Min Aung Hlaing told his ruling military council in January that “peace and stability is still needed” before the state of emergency can be lifted and polls held.
The United States has said any elections under the junta would be a “sham,” while analysts say polls would be targeted by the military’s opponents and spark further bloodshed.
A joint statement by election experts published on the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s website in February said they “unequivocally reject” plans by Myanmar’s junta to hold an election in 2025.
More than 6,300 civilians have been killed since the coup, and more than 28,000 arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.
The conflict has forced more than 3.5 million people to flee their homes, while an estimated 19.9 million people — or more than a third of Myanmar’s population — will need humanitarian aid in 2025, according to the UN.