Afghan protesters demand justice for woman killed by mob

Hundreds marched Monday in the Afghan capital, demanding justice for a woman beaten to death last week by a Kabul mob over false allegations she had burned a Quran — a vicious killing that shocked many Afghans and renewed calls for authorities to ensure women’s rights to equality and protection from violence. The killing has also drawn condemnation from Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, now in Washington on his first state visit to the United States since taking office in September, who denounced it as a “heinous attack” and ordered an investigation. On Thursday, a mob of men beat a 27-year-old religious scholar named Farkhunda to death, threw her body off a roof, ran over it with a car, set it on fire and at the end, threw it into the Kabul River near one of the Afghan capital’s most renowned mosques, the Shah Doshamshera. The attack was captured by cellphone cameras and has been widely distributed on social media.

The people pulled her into a corner of the yard and beat her with sticks, and one man took a large stone and dropped it on her. That was the end.

A policeman who witnessed the attack

Farkhunda, who like many Afghans had just one name, was buried amid a huge public outcry on Sunday, her coffin carried by women’s activists who defied the tradition of men-only pallbearers and funerals. Protesters who gathered near the Shah Doshamshera mosque on Monday demanded the government prosecute all those responsible for the death. Many women in the crowd wore masks of Farkhunda’s battered and bloodied face, which has appeared widely on social media. They carried a banner accusing the government of breaking promises to end corruption and bring rule of law to Afghanistan.

We demand that the government ensure that all those involved are arrested and that they face an open trial so that justice is implemented and they become an example for others.

Social activist at the protest

Middle East