The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on the Biden administration to ensure that refugees from Afghanistan, including freethinkers and religious minorities, are given quick and safe passage.
The Taliban, a religious militia bent on installing a theocracy, has essentially overrun and captured the nation. Despite the outfit’s public assurances, the United Nations is reporting that it is receiving “chilling reports of severe restrictions on human rights throughout” Afghanistan. The secretary-general is “particularly concerned by accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan, who fear a return to the darkest days” of the earlier spell of Taliban rule a bit over two decades ago.
The dire circumstances facing Afghan nonbelievers are unimaginable. FFRF is calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to ensure refugee processing without bureaucratic delay, and with special allowances that recognize the difficulty people face in leaving Afghanistan, particularly Afghan freethinkers.
“The Taliban has a proven history of human rights abuses of women, freethinkers, and anyone who is not seen as a hardline fundamentalist,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “America cannot turn its back on so many Afghans who have fought for years to live their authentic lives. Freethinkers in Afghanistan must be protected and be able to find safe haven elsewhere.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has worked to rescue secular, atheist and nonreligious activists in other countries, including Bangladesh.