A number of Afghan Turkic civil society organizations have issued an open letter condemning the recent incident in Dolat Abad district of Faryab province and calling for international intervention to investigate the incident.
The organizations say that during Eid al-Adha, a group of armed men from neighboring areas attacked women and girls in the village of Quzi Bayqala, sparking public protests; But the Taliban have responded to the protests with widespread arrests and repression. According to local sources, the number of detainees is reported to be more than 100.
The signatories of the letter called the incident part of “discriminatory policies, ethnic engineering and systematic exclusion of non-Pashtun ethnic groups.
The statement makes five specific demands: the immediate release of detainees, the establishment of an international fact-finding mission, a public trial of the perpetrators of the attack, a review of the distribution of power and resources, and increased UN monitoring of the Taliban’s ethnic policies.
Finally, the organizations warned that “the violation of the dignity of women in Quzi Bayqala is an organized attack on the culture and existence of Afghanistan’s Turkic community.”
