A woman was beaten to death and set on fire in Afghanistan for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran. The woman, 27 years of age, was mentally unstable according to her parents.
On Thursday hundreds of men beat the Afghani woman in the city of Kabul. Several videos posted online depicted the atrocity. The woman was beaten to death and lay face down on the ground as a large crowd of men surrounds her. They continued to trample her, throw stones at her, and beat her with sticks long after she had ceased to move. Individuals from the crowd could be heard shouting, “Allahu Akbar” or “God is great.”
In the last part of the video, the men threw her body onto a dry riverbed and poured oil over her body before setting her ablaze. Dozens of men crowd around the burning corpse as they shout “Allahu Akbar.” The crowd reportedly consisted of up to 1,000 individuals.
The events transpired near the Shah Do Shamshera shrine; it is currently unverified whether or not the woman actually burned a copy of the Koran. Organizations from around the globe reacted to the violence that occurred in Kabul.
“The United Nations condemns, in the strongest terms, the brutal killing and burning of a 27 year old mentally ill woman,” wrote the U.N. in a statement on Friday. Elzira Sagynbaeva, the Country Representative for UN Women in Afghanistan, also commented on the situation.
“The continued increase in the number of cases of violence against women and girls in Afghanistan has become a source of major concern and must not be tolerated,” she said. “Afghan women’s rights to safety and security have to be ensured and the survivors of violence supported and perpetrators brought to justice.”
On Friday, President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attacks and said, “No individual is allowed to make oneself a judge and use violence to punish others in degrading manners.” Despite the President’s statement, other members of government seemed to support the crime committed by the mob. Abdul Rahman Ahmadzai, director of endowments in the Ministry of Hajj and Islamic Endowments, told Kabul’s 1TV station that if the woman’s actions were “in opposition to the ayahs or the Quran, and she’s not a Muslim, we justify the action of the people.”
Nine suspects were identified through some of the videos that were posted online and taken into custody. President Ghani has promised a full investigation into Thursday’s killing.
