More than 20 civil society organizations have sent an open letter to German Foreign Minister Johan Wadephul, calling on Berlin to sever all interactions with the Taliban administration and fully honor its commitments to accepting Afghan citizens. This letter was handed to him during his visit to the city of Kiel. According to the organizers, the letter was delivered on Saturday, June 26, by Helen Rock and Leni Hintze from the group “Don’t Forget Afghanistan,” along with Farangis Sogand and Lava Mohammadi from the “Afghan Participation in Schleswig-Holstein” organization, representing the signing organizations. Farangis Sogand, a poet and women’s rights activist, stated that allowing representatives of the Taliban administration into Germany grants this group political legitimacy; however, in her view, the Taliban’s policies and actions, especially towards women, constitute widespread violations of fundamental human rights. She emphasized that silence in the face of this situation is unacceptable, which is why the immediate end of any cooperation with the Taliban is demanded in the letter. The signatories also called for non-recognition of the Taliban administration, refusal to accept the group\u2019s representatives as diplomats in Germany, and recognition of the Taliban\u2019s treatment of women as “gender apartheid.” They stressed that human rights must be a non-negotiable principle in Germany\u2019s policy towards Afghanistan. Additionally, the letter urges the German government to expand and accelerate support and acceptance programs for at-risk Afghans, particularly women, queer individuals, and former military personnel, and to refrain from any agreements regarding the deportation of Afghan refugees. These demands come amid ongoing widespread criticism from human rights organizations regarding the future relations between European countries and the Taliban administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than 20 civil society groups urge Germany to cut all ties with the Taliban and uphold commitments to Afghan citizens amid rights concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}