RASC News Agency: In a strongly worded open letter addressed to the German government and international institutions, a coalition of 96 civil society organizations and women’s protest movements has condemned Germany’s recent steps toward normalizing ties with the Taliban. The signatories warned that engaging diplomatically with a regime notorious for systemic violence and repression constitutes a fundamental betrayal of human rights and an affront to the victims of Taliban brutality in Afghanistan. The letter endorsed by activists for women’s rights, Afghanistani diaspora communities, and advocates for transitional justice underscores the fact that the Taliban’s political foundation rests on terror, ethnic discrimination, and entrenched gender apartheid. According to these groups, any move toward legitimizing the Taliban is tantamount to whitewashing a regime that continues to operate through repression and fear.
“These are not representatives of a legitimate state,” the signatories declared. “The Taliban are perpetrators of systemic violence who have institutionalized the oppression of women and girls, stripped them of access to education, employment, and basic freedoms, and unleashed a campaign of religious and ethnic persecution against minority communities.” The letter also decries recent German deportations of Afghanistani asylum seekers, describing them as violations of international law particularly under the current human rights emergency in Afghanistan. The deportations, they warn, expose returnees to the grave risk of persecution, arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance under Taliban rule.
Despite ongoing atrocities, Germany has deported a second group of Afghanistani migrants in recent weeks. Alarmingly, media reports reveal that Germany’s Minister of Interior has signaled openness to direct dialogue with the Taliban an initiative critics view as deeply misguided and morally bankrupt. The United Nations has responded sharply to Germany’s policy shift, calling such decisions “inappropriate” and underscoring that the human rights situation in Afghanistan remains catastrophic. The UN has stressed that forced returns to a country in crisis are both dangerous and unacceptable, and violate the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning individuals to territories where their lives are at risk.
These warnings come just days after the German federal government forcibly deported 81 Afghanistani nationals some of whom had criminal records on a direct flight from Leipzig to Kabul. Rights groups and UN officials alike argue that even individuals with prior convictions must not be repatriated into a context of state terror and lawlessness. “The Taliban do not constitute a legitimate authority capable of protecting citizens or upholding international human rights norms,” a UN spokesperson stated. “Returning anyone regardless of legal status into the hands of a group that systemically tortures, silences, and disappears dissidents, is a violation of basic human dignity.”
International legal experts and Afghanistani activists are urging Berlin to reverse course and stand firmly with the victims not the perpetrators of terror. At a time when women are banned from universities, religious minorities face daily threats, and civic space has been crushed under Taliban rule, normalizing relations sends a chilling message: that the international community is willing to look the other way.
