ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Facedown before a crowd, the teenage girl shrieks and writhes, begging for mercy. But the three masked men holding her down merely tighten their grip while a fourth man whips her again and again.
The video of a 17-year-old girl being flogged publicly by the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Valley has galvanized the nation, drawing protests from human-rights groups, denunciations from the central government and expressions of revulsion from Pakistanis.
The video, shot this year, surfaced Friday on Pakistani television stations and the Internet.
While reports of abusive acts by the Taliban for months have filtered out of the northwestern valley, where the government in February struck a truce with Islamic militants, such brutal scenes are rarely captured on camera and publicly aired.
“This is intolerable,” Asma Jahangir, head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told journalists in the eastern city of Lahore.
Jahangir said the girl was believed to have refused to marry a Taliban commander. The militants ordered 34 lashes as a punishment, Pakistani news reports said.
The video, shot with a cellphone, initially shows the girl being held by bearded men while another begins striking her. She is dragged away to another location and flogged.
“For God’s sake, please stop, stop it,” the girl pleads as the whip falls. “I am dying.” Off-camera, another militant gives orders: “Hold her feet tightly. Lift her burka a bit.”
A Taliban spokesman, Muslim Khan, said the girl had engaged in immoral behavior he did not specify.
The government’s former information minister, Sherry Rehman, requested a special session of parliament to discuss the incident.
