Iran lashes out for violation of human rights in Afghanistan

A senior Iranian foreign ministry official on Tuesday blamed the US and the West's military presence in Afghanistan for high civilian casualties in there, and condemned their frequent and continued violation of human rights in the war-torn country.Head of Afghanistan's Headquarters in the Iranian Foreign Ministry Mohsen Pak Ayeen pointed to the growing number of civilian casualties of NATO attacks in Afghanistan, and stated, "Today, NATO's 26 European member states and the US, that is the westerners who claim to be advocates of human rights, have become the main violators of human rights in Afghanistan." "Due to NATO's warmongering policies, 56% of the Afghan people are suffering diseases, 50% of them lack access to healthy drinking water, 42% of them are living under the poverty line and 2,300 Afghans have committed suicide only in 2010," he stated. He pointed to military attacks on civilian targets by the NATO forces as a clear example of the severe violation of basic and natural human rights, and stated that a majority of the international bodies have voiced concern about the status of human rights in Afghanistan and blamed NATO for ignoring the international regulations. Earlier this month, anti-war campaigners slammed the British Ministry of Defense for claiming that British troops have only killed 30 Afghan civilians since 2005. The MoD said following a freedom of information request that there had been 99 investigations into incidents where British soldiers had killed or wounded civilians. But anti-war activists rejected the total tally as ludicrously low. Stop the War Coalition organizer Carol Turner said it was likely investigations were only opened where commanding officers felt "there was no way around it". The investigations also appeared to downplay the scale of civilian casualties, she said. The UN reported in March that Afghan government troops and US-led occupation forces had killed a total of 440 civilians in 2010. Local human rights group Afghan Rights Monitor put the figure even higher, saying that 512 civilians had been killed by NATO troops last year.