A Year of Nightmares in Afghanistan: Daily Brief

One year since the capture of Kabul by Taliban forces, Afghanistan is looking back at a twelve-month nightmare from which it can’t awake. Even for a country with decades of tragic experience in conflict and crisis, the last year has been exceptionally hard on Afghanistan. The Taliban have relegated women’s rights to the scrap heap, suppressed the media, and lawlessly detained, tortured and executed critics and perceived opponents. Meanwhile, the Afghan economy has collapsed, and acute hunger is pervasive across the country. And yet, astoundingly, there is food in Afghanistan’s markets. Basic supplies are available. What’s missing is the money to buy it, in significant part because foreign governments have failed to ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid. Join us today for a Twitter Space on Afghanistan’s catastrophic year.

Writer Salman Rushdie is recovering in hospital following hours of surgery after being stabbed repeatedly at an event in western New York. Rushdie has been living under threat of violent attack ever since 1989, when Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared some of the author’s written words blasphemous and called on Muslims to murder him.

Speaking of the poisonous effect of blasphemy as a concept… Indonesia’s blasphemy law has claimed another victim, this time a former government minister over a social media post deemed insulting to Buddhists. The latest case started after the Indonesian government announced it would steeply increase the entry fee for the Borobudur temple, one of the country’s major tourist attractions. Roy Suryo, a former minister of youth and sports affairs, tweeted a picture of a Borobudur stupa whose image had been photoshopped to resemble President Joko Widodo. He received protests, including from Buddhist organizations, and he soon deleted the tweet and apologized. However, police arrested him and charged him with violating the blasphemy law and the internet law. If convicted, Suryo faces punishment of up to 11 years in prison. That seems rather extreme for a tweet…

As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet began her five-day visit to Bangladesh yesterday, nine global human rights organizations urged her to call for an immediate halt to the country’s grave human rights abuses. Robertson, deputy director of HRW’s Asia division said, “She must speak up publicly on the myriad human rights abuses committed daily in Bangladesh by the government and its security forces, starting by demanding the immediate dissolution of the rights-abusing Rapid Action Battalion, which has a long history of torture and extrajudicial executions,”

The Bahrain authorities should free Dr. Abduljalil al-Singace, an academic imprisoned since 2011, 15 organizations including Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the king of Bahrain. Al-Singace, 60, has been on a long-term hunger strike and has post-polio syndrome and numerous other health conditions. He is being denied adequate medical care, his family said.

Rights groups, activists, and fans have rightly criticized the decision of FIFA, football’s international governing body, to award the 2022 World Cup hosting rights to Qatar, citing the country’s serious human rights violations. These include the mistreatment of migrant workers, who have suffered terrible abuse, even unexplained deaths, in delivering the tournament, restrictions on women’s rights, and repression of LGBT people’s rights. The #PayUpFIFA campaign by Human Rights Watch and other organizations is calling on FIFA and Qatar to provide remedy for abuses against migrant workers, including deaths, injuries, and wage theft since 2010 when Qatar was awarded hosting rights. The UK’s two largest trade unions, Unite and Unison, are supporting this call, but with the World Cup fast approaching, the English Football Association has yet to take a clear position.

Europe’s heatwaves have been devastating for millions, but some have been more vulnerable than others…