Madrid. The Taliban announced on Tuesday that they had banned the UN special envoy for human rights in the Asian country, Richard Bennett, from entering Afghanistan, alleging that he was engaged in “spreading propaganda” against the authorities.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid accused the special rapporteur of distorting the reality on the ground to the international community by providing what he called “inaccurate and misleading” information, Afghan television channel Tolo TV reported.
“We have banned Bennett from travelling to Afghanistan because he has been assigned to spread propaganda in Afghanistan. He is not someone we trust. He is not in Afghanistan and is no longer allowed to come here. He used to exaggerate minor issues and propagate them,” Mujahid said. The UN has not yet commented on the matter.
The UN envoy, who has been in the country for just over two years, has constantly criticised what he described as human rights violations in Afghanistan, an allegation consistently rejected by the Taliban, who have been in power since August 2021 and considered such accusations to be far removed from current reality.
The decision comes just a week after the Taliban marked the third anniversary of their return to power in Afghanistan with a military ceremony at the former US base of Bagram and a series of messages in which, although they appealed to the connivance of the international community, they again made it clear that they are willing to apply the ‘sharia’ or Islamic law “at any price.”
The widespread rejection of the current Afghan authorities has also forced humanitarian organisations to balance their efforts to ensure that they do not abandon the population in a country where 23.7 million people, more than half of the country’s citizens, need humanitarian aid, according to UN data.
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– 2024-08-22 16:14:46
