Unidentified gunmen on motorbike shot dead a prominent women’s rights activist, Freshta Kohistani and her brother north of Afghanistan’s capital Thursday, officials said, as a wave of assassinations ravages the violence-wracked country.
“At around 5:00pm today, unidentified gunmen riding on a motorcycle martyred Freshta Kohistani in the Hes-e-Awal area of the Kohistan district of Kapisa. Her brother was wounded in the attack, [and] the intelligence units have launched an investigation into the attack,” the ministry said in the statement.
Police in Kapisa said that Kohistani’s brother was also killed in the attack.
The killing of Kohistani aged 29, was the latest in a string of targeted killings that have prompted international concern.
Kohistani’s killing comes a day after Yusuf Rasheed, the head of an Afghan independent election-monitoring group, was slain in Kabul.
On December 21, Rahmatullah Nikzad, a freelance reporter and head of a media-safety union in the central Ghazni Province, was killed in an attack by unknown armed men in the province.
The attack occurred near his home, according to local officials.
Amnesty International South Asia in a tweet said that the assassination of Nikzad “is a horrific crime.”
Targeted killings of prominent figures, including journalists, clerics, politicians, and rights activists, have become more common in recent months amid rising violence and chaos across Afghanistan despite ongoing talks between government negotiators and the Taliban in Qatar to try to put an end to decades of war.
Former TOLOnews presenter Yama Siawash, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reporter Elyas Daee, Enekaas TV’s presenter in Nangarhar Malala Maiwand, and Ariana News presenter Fardin Amini have all been killed in separate incidents since November 7.
The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has voiced alarm over the “deeply disturbing” numbers of targeted killings in the war-torn country.
In a tweet on December 23, UNAMA reiterated its call for “a sustained reduction in violence” in Afghanistan , where it said “targeted killings of civilians are taking place at a deeply disturbing rate.”
Kapisa provincial governor Abdul Latif Murad told AFP that the shooting had taken place near Kohistani’s home and that her brother was also killed in the attack.
Kohistani had enjoyed a relatively large following on social media, and regularly organized civil society events in Kabul calling for women’s rights. She was married and had one child.
Days before her death, she wrote on Facebook that she had asked for protection from the authorities after receiving threats.
She had also condemned the ongoing wave of assassinations of journalists and other prominent figures.
“Afghanistan is not a place to live in. There is no hope for peace. Tell the tailor to take your measurement, tomorrow it could be your turn,” she tweeted in November.
Journalists, politicians and rights activists have increasingly been targeted as violence surges in Afghanistan, despite peace talks between the government and the Taliban.
On Wednesday, Mohammad Yousuf Rasheed, who led an independent election monitoring organisation, was ambushed and shot in morning rush-hour traffic in Kabul along with his driver.
His murder came a day after five people — including two doctors working for a prison on the outskirts of Kabul — were killed by a car bomb.
A prominent Afghan journalist was also shot this week while on his way to a mosque in the eastern city of Ghazni.
Rahmatullah Nekzad was the fourth journalist to be killed in Afghanistan in the last two months, and the seventh media worker this year, according to the Kabul-based Afghan Journalists Safety Committee. (AFP)
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