I find it quite ironic that this latest unsubstantiated claim by a member of the Taliban (who, of course, has no alterior motive and thus must be telling the truth ) is leading to talk about Canadian's disregarding or not respecting human rights and statements that we might as well be killing them ourselves.
The Afghan government is comprised of various warlords and militia that have no better human rights record than the Taliban. Their abuses of human rights, especially the rights of prisoners is long documented since they have been internationally recognized and every before that (as the Northern Alliance). Don’t pretend to be naïve and claim the first you’ve heard of human rights abuses by the Afghan government is the claims of a Taliban prisoner.
Handing over prisoners to a government that is well known to abuse human rights is an insult to everything our great nation stands for and everything our brave men and women are fighting for.
Why don't you go lecture them about respecting women's human rights?? Or is what's good for the gander ... not good for the goose?
So the Taliban was a brutal and oppressive government, therefore they deserve to be tortured and abused?
Maybe in the dark ages that mentality was the norm, but we live in the 21st century, in which human rights are afforded to all humans, even those who commit the most abhorrent and heinous crimes.
I truly hope that you do not seriously believe that we should actively deny the prisoners in Afghanistan their human rights based on our assumption of their crimes, because if that is the case it seems that everything the men and women who fought for recognition of these humans rights taught has been lost on you, which would be a very sad thing indeed.
that is exactly why we are there in the first place; ensuring that the Taliban (who'd certainly prefer to just slit my infidel female throat rather than even arrest me) are no longer able to just drag citizens of Afghanistan down to the nearest soccer stadium for public execution on a whim anymore. How dare you compare our soldiers handing over prisoners to a legally and democratically elected government to the Taliban.
And we should be there ensuring that the Taliban are not able to commit those atrocities. But how are we helping when instead of the Taliban dragging off women to be shot in a soccer field, we are handing the Taliban over to the Afghan government to be dragged out and shot in a soccer field?
This is not an issue of our soldiers, it is an issue of our leadership and an issue of the agreements they signed with the afghan government.
But most of all it is an issue of upholding the values our nation stands for and the values our people demand. Maybe you don’t care about the rights of those “non white” people off in a distant land you can’t see, but to some of us who respect the fundamental principles this great nation was founded on, and the principles that hundreds of thousands of brave Canadians have fought and died for we can not selectively apply these rights to those we want to. Human rights by definition are extended to all humans, and in order for us, as Canadians, to be able to continue to say that we, in standing tradition are the vanguard of these rights we must ensure that even the fundamental rights of the people trying to kill us are protected.