Human-Rights-Hopeless Afghanistan

"Rather than punishing [Mahmudi and Hamidi] for speaking out against these horrific crimes, the authorities should praise them for their work and hold the suspected perpetrators accountable through fair trials and without recourse to the death penalty."
Samira Hamidi, South Asia campaigner, Amnesty International

"[There was no evidence of widespread rape in schools.]"
"Maybe there are one or two cases, because this is Afghanistan and crime exists everywhere."
Mohammad Qasim Sediqqi, member, Logar provincial council, Afghanistan

"The NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] has a long track record of illegal detention and torture. But this is a new low."
"To detain two human rights activists who exposed government officials and teachers responsible for widespread sexual abuse of children is nothing short of silencing the messenger."
Patricia Gossman, lead Afghanistan researcher, Human Rights Watch

John R. Bass ✔ @USAmbKabul

Deeply disturbed by these Soviet-style tactics of the @NDSAfghanistan. It's appalling to coerce confessions from civil society activists whose goal is to protect #Afghan children. https://twitter.com/AfghanistanTime/status/1199267946020982784 …

Afghanistan’s Logar province, seen in 2014 from a U.S. Chinook helicopter. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

It has long been known that in Afghanistan vulnerable Afghan boys are sexually abused by predators in the society, in a systematic predatory cultural practise called 'Bacha Basi'. Boy play has become a tradition among powerfully positioned men who make it a practise to keep young sex slaves at their service, forced to dress as girls, to dance before men, and submit to rape. Men are able to bid for boys in a peculiarly Afghanistan prostitution environment featuring boys.

Recently, two investigators with a Logar Province advocacy group named as Mohammad Musa and Ehsanulah Hamidi came to the attention of the country's national intelligence agency and they were arrested. When their arrest became known, pressure from the United States and human rights groups forced the government to see them released. Mr. Musa's group, the Logar Youth, Social and Civil Institution had instituted an investigation.

That investigation had been spurred by a Facebook post showing men in sexual positions with boys back in May. Although the post was swiftly taken down, the images were preserved by the group and some of the boys were identified. They had, it would appear, complained of being victims of sexual abuse. Going into action, the Logar group spoke to students, dozens of whom came forward to state they had been raped. In this cesspool culture, hundreds of boys had been raped who attended a  handful of schools.

Teachers and others in the area spoke in the boys' defence, verifying their accounts of sexual abuse. Seven boys who claimed to have been raped were later found dead. It was deduced that their families, out of shame at the revelations had killed the boys to restore their family honour. When the advocacy group reported to Logar provincial police taking with them the statements from the boys there was no reaction. What did occur was that several of the boys who had agreed to questioning by the police were then raped by officers.

A spokesman, Shapoor Ahmadzai with the Logar provincial police stated: "Nobody has come to the police for rape cases. It's just rumours" and false accusations. There was a response from the Kabul Ministry of Education that a delegation was being sent to the province to investigate the situation. Shafiullah Afghanzai, executive officer of Hamid Karzai  high school where a 14- and 17-year-old had been raped stated that the headmaster had been transferred to another district after being accused of sexually assaulting a boy.

"[The spy agency is] trying to arrest me [and] blame me for everything [news to the outside world of Afghan society's rampant sexual predation of boys]."

"Every minute is a possibility that I would be killed. . . . What should I do?"

Mohammad Musa Mahmudi, human rights activist, Logar Province, Afghanistan

Afghanistan Times @AfghanistanTime

NDS releases video clip of two civil activists who reported children sexual abuse in Logar schools some days ago

According to Mr. Afghanzai, teachers at two other schools in the province had raped boys. Three boys, he said, who had reported they were raped were later killed by the Taliban who condemn the sexual abuse as anti-Islamic. They exacted justice by killing the raped boys, not the adult men who had raped them. That is, in fact, Islamic. Requests for comment from a Taliban spokesman went unanswered.

In a few instances boys who had been raped had been thrown out of their homes by their fathers, according to Mr. Musa, who also explained that twenty-five families had chosen to abandon their homes in shame when news of their sons' rapes were made public. But, according to Wakil Kaiiwal, head of the Logar education department, there might have been one or two instances of student rape, but no epidemic of sexual assault occurs in the province's schools.

"It is an issue across the country and Logar isn't exceptional" Mr. Kaliwal added for good measure. In May of 2017, Afghanistan had placed into law criminal offences naming baca bazi and other such offences violations of the national criminal code with a penalty of up to three years in prison. The penalty rises to five years in prison should a teacher, instructor or "supervisor in any way be involved".

Victims of rape are often ostracized or attacked by their family members for having dishonoured their families, according to Lyia Lynn Schwartz, who counsels victims of trauma in the country, who explained further than Afghan boys raped by men frequently suffer extreme emotional and psychological distress. "My father says if he sees me again, he will kill me", said the 17-year-old from Hamid Karzai high school, now homeless, no longer attending school.