Non-Muslims in Afghanistan face extreme discrimination and lack human rights

(CHAKRA) The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) voiced serious concern today over the worsening plight of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan, imploring the Afghan government to address the deteriorating religious freedom conditions in the country.

The most recent media reports from Afghanistan indicate that Hindus and Sikhs are being forcibly denied the right to cremate their dead. In one particular incident, Muslim residents in the Qalacha neighborhood of Kabul in conjunction with Afghan security personnel used force to prevent Hindus and Sikhs from performing cremation ceremonies for their deceased relatives.

“Cremation is an essential funeral rite for both Hindus and Sikhs and integral to the practice of their respective religious traditions,” said Samir Kalra, Esq., HAF’s Director and Senior Fellow for Human Rights. “The government’s failure to uphold their basic rights is in direct violation of both the Afghan Constitution and international human rights law.”

Human rights groups assert that this latest episode was not isolated, but rather part of a larger pattern of discrimination against the Afghan Hindu and Sikh minority. As the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) notes, Hindus and Sikhs routinely face obstacles in cremating their dead, including the forcible occupation of crematoriums, physical interference with cremations, and the inability to obtain land for cremation sites.

The establishment of a democratic government and a new constitution in recent years has done little to protect the religious rights of the Hindu community in Afghanistan, which according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), continues to face widespread harassment, violence, and legal inequalities.

The situation for countless Afghan Hindu and Sikh refugees living outside of Afghanistan remains perilous as well, particularly in countries such as Belgium, where their legal status remains unresolved. Over the past several months, for example, the Belgian government has denied the asylum applications of many Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, with numerous claims still pending.

The European Court of Human Rights recently accused Belgian authorities of failing to adequately investigate the asylum claims of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, leading HAF to take up the issue with the Belgian Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons.

“Considering the extent of persecution endured by religious minorities in Afghanistan and the Afghan government’s inability to protect them, Afghan Hindus and Sikhs in Belgium clearly meet the criteria for refugee status under the Geneva Convention,” said Jay Kansara, HAF’s Associate Director. “Failing to recognize their legitimate asylum claims and deporting them back to Afghanistan would be unconscionable and result in disastrous consequences for these communities.”

Afghan-Sikhs are faced with the problem of not having proper burial places for deaths of Sikhs

By Tan Ong

Afghanistan (CHAKRA) — On a two day visit to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, met members of the Afghan-Sikh minority community in Kabul. He listened to their issues with regards to obtaining Indian citizenship and other problems the Sikh community was facing such as threats and killings in Muslim-majority Afghanistan.

To hear the problems, the Prime Minister met members of the community in the presidential palace complex.

The community members stated their concern about their community’s population decreasing because of migration out of the country, including India. Over 90 percent of the Sikh Afghan community has migrated out of the country.

The lack of a proper cremation ground in Kabul and constant attacks by Islamic extremists has caused an issue for the Sikh community to complete their funeral rites.

In total there are 531 Afghan-Sikh families in Afghanistan of which 143 families reside in Kabul.

An orange-coloured “robe of honour” was presented to the prime minister, know as a siropa. Thereafter, the prime minister was introduced to members of the Indian embassy, the Indo-Tibetan border police, as well as to the Indian Medical Mission.

Manmohan Singh praised the community for staying strong during hard times. He saluted their courage and was pleased to see the community creating goodwill for India.

Afghanistan

By Jagmit Singh

Kabul, Afghanistan (CHAKRA) – The recent beheading of Sikhs by the Taliban in Peshawar, bordering Afghanistan, has reminded the community of the hardships they face on both side of the Pakistan, Afghanistan border today.  Two Sikhs men were reportedly beheaded by the Taliban in the FATA region of Pakistan, with their heads later being dropped at a gurdwara in Peshawar.  Still, reports suggest that other Sikhs are under hostage.

Last year the Pakistani Taliban militants had taken over shops and homes of Sikh families in the Orakzai Agency, while making demand for ransom.  This year’s incidents are repeated attacks from last year, with threats to the Sikh community to convert, if they want to continuing living in Peshawar or even living at all.

The Sikhs have been living in this region of Peshawar for a long time, historically.  India is acclaimed as Sikh’s homeland while they were settling in Afghanistan over phases of its history, especially in the early nineteenth century when the Afghans lost Peshawar to the Sikhs.

Over the last few centuries, descendents of Sikhs traders have settled in Afghanistan starting in Sindh and Punjab through Kandahar, Jalalabad, as well as Kabul.  The trade routes created through these settlements, went across the Hindu Kush to Samarkand, Merv and into Europe.

During the partition of India, a late migration occurred when many Sikhs living in Pakistan, near the Afghan border found it easier to find refuge in Afghanistan rather than taking a risk to travel across the country to go to India.

This new group of Sikh refugees made Afghanistan their home and they are known as the Afghan Sikhs who formed a more ethnically diverse Afghanistan.  Just as they came in during different times in history, the Sikhs also left in different phases—out of the country.

Some left during the Soviet War, dying on their way because of the bombings of the war.  The displacement caused by the war made many travel to India to find a temporary place to live but it turned out to not be temporary after all.

When they returned home shortly, their homes were taken over by warlords and their businesses were all destroyed.   Years of the Sikhs hard work had shattered.

The Afghan Hindus and Sikhs were over 50, 000 in total before 1992 in areas like Ghazni, Jalalabad, Khandahar, Khost, Kabul and Laghman.  Today there are only about 1500 Sikhs living, mostly in Kabul.  The only ones that remained in Afghanistan are the ones who had no relative abroad or not enough resources to migrate somewhere else.

After 2001, many Sikhs have had serious problems and been denied freedom to practice their culture and rituals within the Afghanistan borders.  An attempt to cremate a Sikh body in Kabul led to tensions between the local communities as the cremation was seen as going against beliefs of Islam—the majority religion practiced now in Afghanistan.

Thousands of Sikhs have fled Afghanistan as refugees

Kabul, Afghanistan (CHAKRA) – In a society where many women still breathe under full covering veils and live surrounded by patriarchy, Dr. Anarkali Kaur Honaryar fight’s for women’s rights.

“It is difficult for a woman to be a pilot in Afghanistan. My father said it does not fit in with this country’s culture,” she says.  Instead she has taken on a challenge much greater than flying a plane.

The 25-year-old is known in Afghanistan, after being chosen as their “Person of the Year”, by Radio Free Europes Afghan chapter, in May 2009.

Dr. Honaryar, a dentist, is one of 3000 Sikhs and Hindus that remain in Afghanistan.  Before the civil war of 1991, there were roughly 50 000 Sikhs and Hindus in ethnically diverse Afghanistan but now only a small percentage of that number remains.

The war caused most, including Honaryar’s family and relatives to move away to other countries such as India, Europe, and Canada.

“Some people still think we are foreigners. They think we are Indians who are working and living here for a while. But we are Afghans too, and we should have all the rights and opportunities that other Afghans have,” says the strong outspoken doctor.

In the early 1990’s, Afghanistan was in the middle of a war with an abundance of power in the Taliban’s hands. Due to this war-torn climate girls-schools were banned and closed down and religious minorities were threatened by the Taliban’s extremist Sunni Muslim ideology.

Dr. Honaryar was a victim not only for being a female but also because she was a non-Muslim.  Fortunately for her, she graduated from high school four years before her peers because Baghlan was not taken over by the Taliban.

 ”I am grateful to my parents for supporting my education. Not all Afghan girls have been so lucky,” she says.

“The situation for women has improved since the Taliban days. Now if the Karzai government does not listen to us, at least we can appeal to human rights groups,” she says.

That is why she joined the Afghan Humans Independent Human Rights Commission in 2006.

“They know I am a Sikh but they still trust me with their most personal problems,” she says of the hundreds of mostly Muslim women she meets.

“The culture here is loaded against women. We try to solve their problems, but we also need to change the laws.”

The female literacy rate in Afghanistan is less than 20%.  Honaryar recalls a women coming to her for assistance after husband wanted to divorce her after she was expecting their child.

“She didn’t know that Afghan laws state a husband cannot divorce his pregnant wife. He has to wait till the child is at least two months old. We helped her secure her rights,” she said positively.

Although Dr. Honaryar travels to different places across the globe, she regrets not being able to see India, her ancestral land—her top priority is to visit the Golden temple in Amritsar as well as the Taj Mahal.