RASC News Agency: The East Staffordshire Borough Council in the United Kingdom has formally called for the recognition of the genocide committed against Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic groups, particularly the Hazaras. The council has unequivocally condemned the systematic persecution, arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial killings, and forced displacement of non-Pashtun communities most notably the Hazaras by the Taliban. Furthermore, the council has officially acknowledged and recognized the Hazara genocide perpetrated under the rule of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan between 1891 and 1893. This declaration comes amid mounting international outcry and widespread demonstrations by Afghanistani citizens, both domestically and in the diaspora, advocating for the protection of the Hazara community and the formal acknowledgment of their suffering.
For many, the Taliban’s treatment of the Hazaras particularly over the past three years since their return to power constitutes an ongoing genocide. Human rights activists and civil society organizations have consistently called upon the international community to officially recognize the systematic extermination of the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Since reclaiming control, the Taliban have escalated their campaign of ethnic cleansing, orchestrating mass killings, forced displacements, and large-scale imprisonment of non-Pashtun ethnic groups, particularly Tajiks and Hazaras. The Hazaras, targeted primarily due to their Shiite identity, and the Tajiks, persecuted for resisting Taliban rule and challenging the group’s ethnonationalist hegemony, have faced torture, arbitrary detention, targeted assassinations, and forced expulsion.
Independent reports from national and international organizations indicate that tens of thousands of young Tajiks from Panjshir, Baghlan/Andarab, the Northern provinces, and other Tajik-majority regions have been detained under the pretext of alleged affiliations with anti-Taliban resistance forces and remain incarcerated in Taliban-controlled prisons.
