China US UK Australia Should Be Held Accountable for Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan

© AP Photo / Rahmat Gul

Some of the violations, such as numerous unreported killings of civilians committed by the allies during the nearly 20-year deployment, were revealed via the Afghan War logs leak by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Chinese Ambassador to the UN office in Geneva Chen Xu has urged the UN Human Rights Council to study the alleged human rights violations committed by the militaries of the US, UK, and Australia in Afghanistan and to hold these countries responsible for the alleged illegal actions of their troops.

Chen Xu added that the almost 20-year military campaign has shown the world that force is not the way to resolve issues and that "it can only bring great harm to regional stability as well as the human rights of the people concerned".

"Under the banner of democracy and human rights the US and other countries carry out military interventions in other sovereign states and impose their own model on countries with vastly different history and culture", China's envoy to the UN said, adding that such actions had brought about "great suffering".

China's criticism of the NATO military deployment comes as the military alliance is rushing to withdraw from Afghanistan, with the Taliban*, who had earlier seized the majority of the country, pressing to complete the process by 31 August. The military alliance is ending its nearly 20-year campaign, which started as an operation to eradicate al-Qaeda* in the country, but later shifted to other objectives, such as the fight against the Taliban.

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*Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are terrorist organisations outlawed in Russia

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