Human rights

Human rights
The world's nations must speak out against labeling, persecution of minorities

May 29, 2001

The Taliban — the military group that controls much of Afghanistan — has decreed that Hindus in that country should wear scraps of yellow cloth on their garments.

Jews worldwide say the move is similar to the Nazi requirement that German Jews wear yellow stars on their clothing. No one has forgotten what happened next, and so the question is raised: What should the rest of the world do to protect the lives of Hindus in Afghanistan?

The official explanation is that if they are readily identifiable as belonging to a religious minority, they are less likely to be punished for deviating from the strict rules governing Muslims. "Hindus should not look like Muslims for their own protection, so that they are not bothered by the religious police," a government spokesman said.

Those who look different will be treated differently, and only the very naive can believe that members of an religious minority in an Islamic nation will be treated better than the majority. This is the same militia that just a few weeks ago blasted Buddhist statues into dust, which hardly seems like a form of protection. Even without "official" action, the potential for harassment is obvious. In a country controlled by a fundamentalist Islamic militia, that harassment is likely to take deadly form.

Realistically, though, what can be done?

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We want to make quite clear that forcing social groups to wear distinctive clothing or identifying marks stigmatizes and isolates those groups and can never, never be justified."

Boucher’s statement stops well short of suggestion that the United States or the United Nations might act if the Taliban doesn’t rescind its order, and for good reason. Public sentiment doesn’t support sending U.S. troops into a place where the likelihood of real change is small. No one has forgotten that Saddam Hussein is still in power in Iraq, and much of his strength stems from his open defiance toward the United States and the sinful West. Would the outcome be different in Afghanistan, a country where resentment of the United States was nurtured by the Soviet Union?

Washington has been very judicious in picking its interventions. There are places in the world right now in which ethnic minorities are subject to slaughter, and with few exceptions, we have held our hands in the air and proclaimed the conflicts to be none of our business. Economic sanctions punish the poor and apolitical while not touching those in power.

The Taliban is not likely to be disturbed by widespread censure. Nevertheless, the civilized nations of the world must say, with one voice, that persecution of minorities is not to be tolerated. Citizens of those nations must move beyond the idea that "Americans" cannot concern themselves in "Afghan" affairs. Human beings can concern themselves with the treatment of other human beings, regardless of the political, genetic or religious subgroups to which they belong.

In this instance, we hope more moderate Islamic nations can apply sufficient pressure to protect the Hindus of Afghanistan. At the same time, the rest of us need to devise a course of action that can be applied in all such situations, so that we’re not left scrambling to wonder if we can protect Afghanistan’s Hindus any better than the world protected Europe’s Jews.