A video has emerged online showing a young Afghan woman being stoned to death after being accused of having premarital sex in central Afghanistan, according to the international broadcaster Radio Free Europe.
The 30-second clip appears to show a group of men throw stones at a woman, who cowers in a hole in the ground as she pleads with the men and professes her Muslim faith. One man appears to film the incident on his phone, while a crowd looks on.
The woman has been identified by local officials as a 19-year-old called Rokhshana, who was accused of having sex with her fiancé, a 23-year-old man named Mohammad Gul. He received several lashings.
According to AFP the woman was killed about a week ago in a Taliban-controlled area just outside Firozkoh, the capital of central Ghor province. One Afghan official said that Taliban, local religious leaders and armed warlords carried out the stoning.
The woman and her 23-year-old fiancé had attempted to run away in order to be married, according to the Provincial Governor Seema Joyenda—one of only two female governors in Afghanistan. Joyenda told AFP that Rokhshana's family had arranged for her to be married to an older man against her will.
Mob killings and violence against women remain huge problems in the highly conservative country, particularly in rural areas and despite the fall of the Taliban in 2001. This killing echoes that of another that occurred in March, when a woman called Farkhunda was beaten and set on fire in Kabul after being accused of burning a copy of the Koran.
Stoning is officially banned in Afghanistan, despite the then president Hamid Karzai's plans to reintroduce the punishment in 2013, which prompted an international outcry.
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