The floggings will continue until morale improves is an old workplace joke. As a joke it’s not up there with the bumper sticker advice to Support mental health or I’ll kill you, but it’s a classic. The latter seems to me to have taken on new life as the tactical wisdom of the left.
The former comes to mind in connection with the legacy of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The AP headline announces “UN urges Afghanistan’s Taliban to end floggings, executions.” The long AP story reports from Islamabad:
A U.N. report on Monday strongly criticized the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stonings since seizing power in Afghanistan, and called on the country’s rulers to halt such practices.
In the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA.
“Corporal punishment is a violation of the Convention against Torture and must cease,” said Fiona Frazer, the agency’s human rights chief. She also called for an immediate moratorium on executions.
The Taliban foreign ministry said in response that Afghanistan’s laws are determined in accordance with Islamic rules and guidelines, and that an overwhelming majority of Afghans follow those rules.
“In the event of a conflict between international human rights law and Islamic law, the government is obliged to follow the Islamic law,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban began carrying out such punishments shortly after coming to power almost two years ago, despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s.
At the same time, they have gradually tightened restrictions on women…
Hmmm. What happened “almost two years ago”? The AP can be so discreet when it wants to be.
The UN report is accessible here. The UN News précis pulls a quote noting the administration of punishments “including lashings or floggings, stoning, forcing people to stand in cold water, and forced head shaving[.]”
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