RASC News Agency: In a strongly worded statement, the Afghanistan Freedom Front has welcomed the latest report by Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, describing it as an unvarnished and truthful reflection of what the group terms a “system of brutal repression and codified structural apartheid” under Taliban rule. The report, released on Monday, outlines an alarming pattern of systemic abuse, particularly against women, ethnic minorities, and marginalized communities. Bennett notes that women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan face compound layers of institutional discrimination, including gender-based exclusion, ethnic suppression, and a total denial of access to justice, legal protection, healthcare, and education.
The Freedom Front responded by urging the international community to officially recognize the Taliban’s gender-based apartheid as a crime under international law, calling for urgent legal proceedings through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to investigate and prosecute Taliban crimes against humanity. Furthermore, the group called on world governments and international organizations to exert unrelenting diplomatic and political pressure on the Taliban to allow unconditional and unrestricted access for Richard Bennett to enter Afghanistan a move the Taliban have so far consistently blocked.
“The Taliban’s continued obstruction of the UN Special Rapporteur’s mission is a clear attempt to obscure the magnitude of their atrocities and silence international scrutiny,” the statement reads. “This obstruction is not merely a bureaucratic defiance it is a calculated cover-up of widespread war crimes and systemic abuse.” The Freedom Front further reiterated its legitimate right to armed resistance, citing the lack of domestic legal recourse under Taliban rule. It asserted that armed struggle remains a recognized form of self-defense under international law in the face of tyranny, ethnic persecution, and genocidal repression.
“Where justice is denied, where institutional impunity shields the perpetrators of state terror, the right to armed resistance becomes not only legitimate but morally imperative,” the Front emphasized. The statement also denounced the Taliban’s ongoing persecution of former members of the Afghanistani National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). According to the Freedom Front, killings, torture, arbitrary detentions, and enforced disappearances are being systematically carried out under the guise of the Taliban’s so-called “general amnesty” a hollow promise that has only served to camouflage retribution, purge opposition, and consolidate terror.
In a direct condemnation of the Taliban’s sectarian policies, the Freedom Front highlighted the erasure of the Jafari school of Islamic jurisprudence from Afghanistan’s legal and administrative institutions, calling it a gross violation of religious freedom and an affront to centuries of sectarian coexistence in Afghanistan. The statement also condemned the systematic removal of the Persian Dari language from government, education, and public life, describing the Taliban’s actions as a form of cultural cleansing and linguistic apartheid aimed at erasing the identity of non-Pashtun communities.
“This cultural purging whether in language, religion, or education is not merely a byproduct of Taliban rule. It is their deliberate policy: to impose an exclusionary and monolithic Pashtun-Islamist identity on a country built on ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity,” the Front warned. The Afghanistan Freedom Front concluded its statement by reaffirming its commitment to confronting Taliban rule on all fronts political, legal, and military and called on the global community to move beyond mere condemnations and take tangible, coordinated actions to isolate the Taliban diplomatically, support accountability mechanisms, and stand in solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Afghanistan.
