Report on Afghanistan urges steps to normalcy.

The Government of Afghanistan "should respect and apply fully the international obligations deriving from international human rights instruments", a Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Commission declared in a report to the Commission.

The human rights situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated since the April 1978 revolution because of "the absence of popular participation in the choice and administration of Government", according to the 50-page report by Special Rapporteur Felix Ermacora (E/CN.4/1985/21).

The "situation of gross violations of human rights" had caused some four million Afghans to flee and seek refuge in several countries, particularly Pakistan, Iran and India, the Special Rapporteur said. "Many lives have been lost, many people have been incarcerated in conditions far removed from respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, many have been tortured and have disappeared, humanitarian norms have been flouted in the conflict taking place, and the resulting situation is fraught with danger for the population as a whole."

"The rule of law must be reestablished in the country" in a manner consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Mrs. Ermacora said.

He recommended that the party in power and the opposition movements should be convened with a view to establishing the traditional Afghan assembly of tribal elders, the Loya Jirgah, or its equivalent "so as to initiate the process of normalization including the withdrawal of the foreign forces" which are "one of the main causes of the present human rights situation".

The "Fundamental Principles" proclaimed by Afghanistan's Revolutionary Council in 1980 provide for eventual establishment of the Loya Jirgah to adopt a constitution, he recalled.

The Special Rapporteur also proposed that:

--The Government should halt "torture against opponents of the regime, which is currently commonplace and which has almost assumed the character of an 'administrative practice'".

--An independent international humanitarian organization such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or others nominated by the parties should be entrusted with ensuring respect for humanitarian principles in the conduct of hostilities. ICRC should have full access to prisons, places of detention, "internal refugee camps" or other places as necessary to carry out humanitarian tasks.

--Members of all forces engaged in the conflict, those of Governments as well as of the opposition, should be recognized as combatants within the framework of international humanitarian law.

--The rights of the four million refugees to return to their homes safely should be respected "and a general amnesty should be formally proclaimed for everyone, regardless of their political opinions".

--The Governments directly involved in Afghanistan's human rights situation "should co-operate fully with the United Nations, in particular in clarifying the fate of missing persons, and should do everything possible, as a matter of urgency, to contribute to the restoration and upholding of human rights in Afghanistan."

Mr. Ermacora noted that Afghanistan had ratified the International Covenants on human rights and had signed the recently adopted Convention against torture.

He observed that "it might be advisable for Afghanistan to consider the possibility of formally committing itself to a policy of non-alignment or even to a status of permanent neutrality under international law, with a view to facilitating the maintenance of its territorial integrity and political independence" and creating conditions "conducive to the respect and guarantee of human rights".

Mandate

Mr. Ermacora, a professor of law, is a member of Austria's Parliament and a member of the Human Rights Commission's Ad Hoc Working Group of Experts on southern Africa.

He was appointed on 13 August 1984 on the basis of resolution 1984/55, adopted by the Human Rights Commission on 15 March 1984 by a vote of 27 to 8 with 6 abstentions. The Special Rapporteur was asked "to examine the human rights situation in Afghanistan, with a view to formulating proposals which could contribute to ensuring full protection of the human rights of all residents of the country, before, during and after the withdrawal of all foreign forces".

In various statements cited in the report, Afghanistan rejected the Commission resolution as a "politically motivated" and hypocritical interference in its internal affairs, and stated that measures had been taken since December 1979 to ensure fundamental rights and freedoms.

Mr. Ermacora said he was unable to visit Afghanistan, since the Afghan Government had not replied to a letter in which he asked permission to visit. He therefore had decided to go to Pakistan to compile information with the help of the many Afghan refugees in that country. He based his observations "on a cross-section of the direct, personal experience of victims of alleged violations and on the considerable volume of documentation on the subject by individuals and humanitarian organizations with direct knowledge and experience of the situation".

Afghan refugees who were interviewed attributed their departure to "a need for what was termed as 'respect for the faith and for liberty'", the Special Rapporteur observed. "In essence, the reason for their flight from Afghanistan was the human rights situation that persisted there." The four million Afghan refugees constituted approximately one third of the country's total population.

The Special Rapporteur stated that at present, "according to one source", over 50,000 political prisoners were held in Kabul and the provincial prisons. A number of accusations of ill-treatment and torture had been brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur, who was "apprised of a whole series of torturing techniques applied".

Past and present fighting in Afghanistan had given rise to a number of acts such as "willful killing, including murder; torture and inhuman treatment; denial of a fair trial; arbitrary arrest and execution of sentences; and taking of hostages", Mr. Ermacora stated. The means by which those acts had been carried out had been described to the Special Rapporteur as "reprisals, indiscrimate bombardment, non-respect of hospital zones, maltreatment of prisoners taken during the fighting, non-respect of personal property and use of specialized weaponry".

In the camps and refugee hospitals at Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan, Mr. Ermacora said, he had talked with wounded persons who alleged that they had been the victims of poison gases.

Eyewitnesses told the Special Rapporteur of alleged masscares of civilians during the bombardment of villages. According to those witnesses, wuch acts were part of a deliberate policy, especially over the last two years, to force the people to take flight. One witness declared that the country's economy had been completely destroyed by the systematic bombing of rural areas housing about 85 per cent of the population, and in fact occupied by the resistance and regarded as liberated zones.

Alleged massacres

With regard to reports of massacres, he cited the following alleged cases as examples:

* On 13 September 1982, approximately 105 persons reportedly had been killed in the village of Padkhwabe-Shana in the province of Logar, including 61 victims from the village itself. In the course of an infantry operation in the village, the population, consisting of children, old people and a few combatants, had taken flight and hidden in an underground channel used for irrigation. To dislodge them, troops had poured a whitish liquid mixed with white powder into three outlets of the channel and set fire to it. Charred and decomposed bodies had been brought out by the villagers. The corpses were said to include 12 children.

* On 12 October 1983, in the villages of Kulchabat, Bala Karz and Mushkizi in the province of Kandahar, 360 persons had been executed in the village squares, including 20 girls and about 20 old people.

* In March 1984, several hundred civilians had been massacred in the villages of Dash-E-Bolokhan and Dashe-Asukhan in the Kohistan region.

* In November 1984, some 40 civilians had been massacred in the village of Zirvq situated in the Urgun region after two weeks of steady bombardment. According to the witnesses, several houses had been destroyed and the cattle decimated.

According to testimony compiled by the Special Rapporteur, the situation was "particularly disturbing in regard to the fate of captured prisoners, women and children, and wounded and sick persons". Most of the witnesses interviewed had stated that captured combatants were "systematically assassinated". There were also a large number of accusations that prisoners of war were tortured and in some cases killed. On witness described how 20 combatants were "bayoneted" to death in December 1982 At Ghazni.

Prisoners captured by the resistance movements apparently suffered the same type of treatment. The Special Rapporteur received testimony to the effect that the treatment varied according to the category of the prisoner captured by the resistance: Muslim or non-Muslim Afghans were integrated into the resistance or freed but kept under surveillance, but foreign non-Muslim prisoners had been summarily executed.

Reforms opposed

The report said reforms introduced during various periods of Afghan history had met with considerable opposition from a number of tribes and ethnic or religious groups as running counter to traditional religious values. Since the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbourliness and Co-operation between Afghanistan and the USSR, Afghan political and administrative institutions had found themselves under the "domination and control" of a foreign power--"a regime which attached no importance to Muslim religious values, thus giving rise to even greater oppostion".

With the advent of the current regime in December 1979, the report said, "three significant factors appeared which had had and continued to have serious consequences for the human rights situation in the country. In the first place, the regime which was installed in December 1979, like its immediate predecessors, was a regime which was not elected by the people and which had never submitted to a free expression of will by the population and was therefore unrepresentative. In the second place, the regime had instituted a series of reforms of which the least that can be said was that they proceeded at a pace that was apparently unacceptable to the population at large and were stoutly resisted by large segments of the Afghan people. Thirdly, the regime had not only applied its reforms with severity, but requested and accepted that foreign armed forces join in their imposition, thus creating a situation of conflict."

The report stated that, following the entry into Afghanistan of the foreign troops on 29 December 1979, the country's judicial system, "which traditionally followed that in other countries and was administered by persons trained in law and in the administration of justice", had changed so that the administration of justice was entrusted to persons who did not have such training. According to information communicated to the Special Rapporteur, "it was said that certain tribunals were made up of members of the secret police".

Any sovereign State within the United Nations was free to choose its political system and the United nations should not intervene in that system, said the report. However, the human rights system of a given State, "in particular in a situation where gross violations of human rights are alleged, may be considered and even evaluated within a universal organization whose aim was to promote human rights".