Victim’s Name: Yaminuddin
Date of Incident: June 23, 1979
Place of Incident: Pul-i-Charkhi Prison (Polygon), Kabul
In late June 1979, my father and my uncle were summoned by the Laghman Department of Education. When they went there, they were instead arrested and transferred to the Laghman Detention Center without any reason. They were not allowed to meet anyone from their family and friends. Even when a relative found a way, my father had signalled him not to meet. Two days later, they were transferred to Kabul by public transportation. Since our village was on the way, my father had requested to meet his children for one last time.
I was playing when my brother took me to the main road on his bike. When their mini-bus arrived, two armed soldiers were escorting my handcuffed father and uncle. I jumped into the bus and my father tried to hug me. He cried and told me to stay strong. We did not know it was our last meeting and that he would never to return. Forty years later, I still feel like it happened just yesterday. I cannot stop crying whenever I am reminded of those last moments.
A few months later, my mother came crying and said the new government had released a list of 12,000 people who were executed during Noor Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin’s rule. One of my family members went to Kabul but failed to find my father and uncle’s names in the list so we became hopeful again that they might still be alive. We kept searching for them everywhere and looked for any clue that could indicate if they are alive or dead but failed. It took us 35 years to find out. We found their names, the number 2419 and 2420, on the list of 5,000 executed victims that the Government of Netherlands had released. They were executed on June 23, 1979, three days after they were transferred to Kabul. My father was accused of being a Maoist and my uncle of being a Muslim Brotherhood member, charges that were never true. They were simple high-school teachers. Only three months had passed since my uncle Nassruddin’s wedding when he was arrested, and his wife had to waited for another 35 years to heard of his death.
