DATE=04/13/2002

TYPE=EDITORIAL

NUMBER=0-09820

TITLE=EDITORIAL: MASS GRAVES OF TALEBAN VICTIMS

INTERNET=Yes

CONTENT=THIS EDITORIAL IS BEING RELEASED FOR USE BY ALL SERVICES.

Anncr: Next, an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government:

Voice: Citizens of the war-ravaged city of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, have discovered three mass graves believed to contain the bodies of ethnic Hazaras murdered by the now-defunct Taleban regime. United Nations investigators have been called in. A Hazara spokesman, Abdul Satar, said that the graves contained the remains of thirty-five people, including children. Many of the bodies had bullet wounds. "All this happened during the black era of the Taleban," said Satar.

The Hazaras are largely of the Shiite Muslim faith. They were brutally persecuted by the Taleban. In 1997, the Taleban murdered some six-hundred Hazaras in Faryab [fahr-yahb] province. They also killed delegations of Hazara elders who pleaded with them to spare civilians. In 1998, the Taleban captured Mazar-E-Sharif [mah-ZAHR-ee-shah-reef]. Thousands of men, women, and children -- many Hazara -- were massacred. Taleban forces systematically searched out Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek men and killed them. Women and girls were reportedly raped by Taleban troops.

Hazaras and other ethnic groups were attacked again by the Taleban in 1999. Early in 2001, the Taleban murdered Hazara and other civilians at Yakaolong [yah-kow-lahng]. Taleban troops rounded up about three-hundred men, including staff members of local humanitarian groups, and executed them. There are eyewitness reports of Taleban forces firing rockets into a mosque where some seventy women, children, and elderly men had sought refuge. Many were killed.

The mass graves around Bamiyan are not the only monuments to Taleban cruelty and fanaticism. The Bamiyan region is the site of the now-obliterated massive statues of Buddha destroyed last year. The statues were destroyed on the orders of the now-fugitive former supreme Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Carved one-thousand-five-hundred years ago, the statues were an irreplaceable cultural treasure. It took Taleban authorities a month to demolish them. The statues withstood point blank fire from artillery and tanks. Explosives experts, provided by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist group, were brought in to complete the destruction. Local Hazara villagers were forced to suspend themselves by ropes from cliffs to carve out cavities for the explosives. When the vandalism was completed, the Taleban spray-painted the ruins with the now-prophetic inscription: "the just replaces the unjust."

But it is the unjust Taleban regime that has been replaced. It's time now to bring the remaining Taleban and al-Qaida to justice.

Anncr: That was an editorial reflecting the views of the United States Government. If you have a comment, please write to Editorials, V-O-A, Washington, D-C, 20237, U-S-A. You may also comment at www-dot-ibb-dot-gov-slash-editorials, or fax us at (202) 619-1043.