Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, respected members of Parliament, for having me this morning to testify about the human rights violations that are taking place in Afghanistan.
My name is Reverend Majed El Shafie. I'm the founder and president of One Free World International for human rights. Our organization works on human rights violations that are taking place in different places in the world, in 28 countries. We have branches in 28 countries, and one of them is Afghanistan.
Four years ago I visited Afghanistan. When we went there, we were able to connect with local human rights organizations, we were able to connect with different individuals, we were able to build a system, and we were able to build a group on the ground, basically to monitor the human rights situation in Afghanistan during the past four years. But in the past four years, especially in the last two years, the information and the reports about human rights violations in Afghanistan have started to get worse and worse. So we indicated that we have to go to Afghanistan to visit the victims and to meet with some government officials there to confront them about their level of human rights violations.
From June 25 to June 30, 2010, One Free World International went with a delegation of human rights activists, media personnel, and even one of the members of this committee, Mr. Mario Silva, who accompanied us to Afghanistan. We met with the deputy foreign affairs minister of Afghanistan, the deputy minister of education, and with different human rights organizations, such as Dr. Jalal's foundation. We met with Dr. Sima Samar from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. We even met with the president's security adviser in the presidential palace. But most important of all, we met with victims.
On this trip we were able to pinpoint three main issues of human rights violations that are taking place right now in Afghanistan, and it's getting worse.
The number one issue is the abuse of women that is taking place in Afghanistan. To start with, Afghanistan has issues with women's abuse, in that there are forced marriages, exchange marriages, and under-age marriages. But the problem here is that as this has become part of the culture of the society, the Afghani government made it even worse by passing a law last year, on July 27, 2009. This law was the Shia Personal Status Law. According to this law, if a woman refused to sleep with her husband every four days, he'd have the right to starve her to death, to stop the necessities of life to her. This is according to the Afghani law.
Now, I'm not talking about the Taliban; I'm talking about the Hamid Karzai government. According to this law as well, a woman cannot work, cannot leave her home or her apartment without permission from her husband, and it allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying blood money to his victim. So basically, if a man rapes a woman, he doesn't need to go to prison if he pays her money. He doesn't need to go to the court. This is according to the law that was passed last year by the Afghani government. This is in contradiction of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which the government of Afghanistan signed onto in March 2003.
When we met with some of these ladies, such as Fatima or Zahira or Ahmadia, they indicated to us that they'd been raped by their husbands and that when they refused they were beaten and all the necessities of life, such as food and clean water, were stopped until they gave their husbands what they wanted. One of these victims said in front of me that the punishment in some areas in Afghanistan was to hang a woman upside down and to beat her with sticks until she soiled herself. One of the victims said that.
Moving on to the second subject is the boy play, or the bacha bazi. In the boy play the Afghani rich elite bring little boys, they make them dress like girls, they make them dance at a party, and at the end of the party whoever pays more will rape this little boy. This is taking place right now in Afghanistan. Some members of the government are taking part in these kinds of celebrations.
The United Nations declared this is a form of sex slavery. This contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 4, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 24. There is a law against boy play in the Afghani government, but the enforcement of this law is another story.
When we met with the victims, such as Farho, who is 16 years old and was abused by the age of 14, he told us he would get raped by eight to ten men every night. When he went to the police--this was Farho, age 16.... Muqtar was another victim, 16 years old, and when I asked him why he didn't go to the police officers and inform them of this crime, that somebody was raping him, he said when he went to tell the police officers they did the same thing to him at the police station.
The last subject we were in touch with when we went to Afghanistan was on May 27 and 28, 2010. There was a television news show, and they showed some Afghani Muslims getting baptized and converting to Christianity, 25 of them. This was not the first time. I don't know if you remember, but in March 2006 a gentleman by the name of Abdul Rahman converted from Islam to Christianity. He was put in jail and under international pressure they said he was insane and sent him to Italy. I don't know if you recall this case. But the reason was that on May 27 and 28 Afghani television showed 25 Muslims converting to Christianity and getting baptized.
What has happened is that Mr. Abdul Attar Khawasi, a respected member of the Afghani Parliament, the deputy secretary in the lower house said, and I quote: “Those Afghanis that appeared in this video film should be executed in public, the house should order the attorney general and the NDS”--the intelligence agency in Afghanistan--“to arrest these Afghanis and execute them.” He said this in the Afghani Parliament in front of Afghani national television without any shame.
President Hamid Karzai's spokesperson has stated that the president himself has taken on this matter and urged his interior minister and the head of intelligence to investigate. I am now quoting the spokesperson of Mr. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan: “...to take immediate and serious action to prevent this phenomenon.”
I'm not talking here about a debate about religion. I'm not talking about one religion being better than another. This is not a debate about religion. This is about freedom of religion and being free to convert to whatever religion you want.
After that they shut down two churches, Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid, which had nothing to do with the conversion of these 25 people, and they shut down 13 Christian NGOs.
Next week, next Sunday, one of the 25--and the 25 are subject to torture and rape in the prison--one of them, Mr. Said Musa, will have his tenth trial in the Kabul court.
Our organization succeeded, through our work underground in Afghanistan, to basically be able to get inside the Afghani intelligence security system. I hold right now in my hand a document signed by the minister himself and his colleagues and the Afghani police to arrest Ali Walid Rida, Salim Walid Mohammed Nasim, Shukrullah Walid Nedra Ali, Rahmatullah Walid Kareem Bakhesh, and Ali Mizrai Walid Hasan Shah. These are some of the people who converted from Islam to Christianity. They order their arrests and to stone them to death.
