U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice responded Sunday to dramatic video of a woman being flogged in Pakistan that surfaced days after President Obama announced billions in aid to the nation.
The video, which was shot two weeks ago in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, shows Taliban holding a 17-year-old girl on the ground and whipping her as she screams and begs her attackers to “either kill me or stop it now.” The man who captured the cell phone video told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper that the girl was flogged 34 times for refusing a marriage proposal. The spurned suitor reportedly joined the Taliban after being rejected.
{mosads}”So far the United States has not responded to a request for comment on this incident,” said “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos to Rice. “Why not?”
“I think obviously we’d be very, very concerned at any instance of an abuse of human rights and this would appear to be such an instance,” Rice responded. “The president spoke out very forcefully about our concern about the law that has passed in Afghanistan, and whether we’re talking about Pakistan or Afghanistan or any other country in the world, the United States is very firm in insisting that human rights must be respected universally and this sort of behavior would be inconsistent with that.”
Rice was referring to a new law in Afghanistan, applying only to the Shiite minority, under which women need “a legitimate purpose” to leave the house and must submit to their husbands’ sexual advances. The law has come under fire from human rights activists and has even been cited as a reason why NATO has been reluctant to offer more troops to the war in Afghanistan.
“We are there to defend universal values and when I see, at the moment, a law threatening to come into effect which fundamentally violates women’s rights and human rights, that worries me,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the recent summit where Obama tried to rally more volunteers. “I have a problem to explain to a critical public audience in Europe, be it the UK or elsewhere, why I’m sending the guys to the Hindu Kush.”
And the $1.5 billion in aid to Pakistan each year for five years that is a key cog in Obama’s Afghanistan strategy hasn’t come without controversy, either. The beating of the teen seen on the video occurred in the North-West Frontier Province after the Pakistani government brokered a February peace deal with the Taliban there that allowed them to mete out Sharia law.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the flogging on Friday even as his information minister questioned whether the video was a stunt to undermine the peace deal and a Taliban spokesman said the beating should have been done behind closed doors. “Nevertheless, one thing was confirmed and that is that the girl was wayward and therefore she should be punished,” spokesman Haji Muslim Khan told Adnkronos International.
Stephanopoulos asked Rice about the aid concerns. “Pakistan has the most immediate stake in preventing the spread of extremism within its own territory,” Rice responded. “The actions of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies threaten Pakistan on a daily basis even as they threaten us as well. So our aim in the new policy that the president has unveiled… is focused on supporting both Afghanistan and Pakistan in their efforts to root out this sort of extremism.
“The assistance we will be providing Pakistan, both economic and military, will be tied to Pakistan’s ability and willingness to continue to do what it has been doing, which is try to root out these extremists,” Rice said.
U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke visits Islamabad on Monday to discuss the conditions for that aid.