Afghanistan's government has
backed away from a proposal to reintroduce public stoning as a punishment for adultery
after the leak of a draft law stirred up a storm of international condemnation.
The
president, Hamid Karzai, said in an
interview that the grim penalty, which became a symbol of Taliban brutality when the group
were in power, would not be coming back.
"It
is not correct. The minister of justice has rejected it," he told Radio
Free Europe, days after the UK minister Justine Greening urged him to prevent the penalty becoming law.
Afghanistan's penal code dates back over
three decades. The government is drawing up a new one to unify fragmented rules
and cover crimes missed out when the last version was written, such as money
laundering, and offences that did not even exist at the time, such as internet
crimes.
The justice minister presiding over the
reform is an outspoken conservative who last year denounced the country's
handful of shelters for battered women as brothels.
As part of the process, a committee tasked
with looking at sharia law came up with draft legislation that would have
condemned married adulterers to the slow and gruesome death; unmarried people
who had sex would be flogged.
But after several days of silence in the face
of growing international outcry, the justice ministry said in a statement that
although stoning had been proposed it would not appear in the new legislation
because there was "no need to regulate the issue".
The country's penal code already encompasses
sharia law, but some controversial aspects of traditional punishments such as
stoning have never been put on the books in Afghanistan.
"The legality of the crime and
punishment is fully addressed and there is no need to regulate the issue in the
new code. So, the ministry of justice does not intend to regulate it in the new
draft code," the statement said.
Rights groups who first highlighted the draft
law warned that although the government's quashing of the proposal was good
news, its emergence in the first place was a sign of how fragile gains in human
rights over the last decade had been, particularly for women.
Although stoning is listed as a punishment
for adulterers of both sexes, in countries where it has been used in recent
years women have often appeared on the execution ground alone.
As foreign troops head home before a 2014
deadline for the end of combat action in Afghanistan, and political attention
fades with it, many activists fear that years of painstaking progress are at
risk of being swept away.
"Of
course it's a huge relief that the government appears eager to disown this
proposal now, but this is not an aberration that appeared out of the
blue," said Heather Barr of Human
Rights Watch.
"It is just the latest in a long string
of efforts to roll back women's rights over the last half year, many of which
have been successful. It is time for donors to wake up and realise that if
there is not constant pressure on the Afghan government to respect women's
rights, there will be no women's rights."