Send a letter to president Karzai and ask the immediate release of a young Afghan Journalist

Dear friends
The upper house of the Afghan parliament has supported a death sentence against a journalist convicted of blasphemy in northern Afghanistan.
Parvez Kambakhsh, 23 was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded was deemed to be offensive to Islam.

I'm asking for your support for this petition seeking clemency for this young journalist and for the still-fragile freedom of speech in Afghanistan.
For more information regarding this matter please check the below links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7216976.stm

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080123.wafghanjourno0123/BNStory/International/home

Please sing this potition by leaving a comment or sending an email to me.
My email adress is: mir.mahdavi@gmail.com

Dear President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Honorable Hamid Karzai


Thank you for all you have done in these past years to ensure the safety and well being of the Afghan people.
We were informed of the death sentence handed out to a journalist based in Mazar-i-Shariff, by a provincial court in your country on Tuesday, January 22, 2008. Mr. Pervez Kambakhsh has been convicted of blasphemy for peacefully distributing copies of articles downloaded from the Internet which some say question the Koran.
We are extremely concerned about this verdict. The death penalty is a brutal and dehumanizing act for both executioner and victim. It is especially distressing that such extreme punishment would be meted out to a person who has not committed a violent or criminal act, and who was simply and peacefully sharing written materials.
We are also concerned about the fairness of Mr. Kambaksh’s trial, in particular with due process. Concerns about these issues were highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur in October 2002 and in 2003, in which the UN Commission on Human Rights called on the Afghan government to "declare a moratorium on the death penalty in the light of procedural and substantive flaws in the Afghan judicial system."

We respectfully call upon you, Mr. President, to lift the death sentence against Mr. Pervez Kambakhsh and pardon him from any other punishments for his “crime”. We also ask that you take steps to ensure that freedom of press and speech are indeed fully guaranteed in your Afghanistan.

1- Stephen R. Arnold, MA The Hamilton Spectator business reporter

2- Daniel Nolan The Hamilton Spectator reporter

3- Suzanne Bourret The Hamilton Spectator reporter

4- John Burman The Hamilton Spectator reporter

5- Julie Payne CJFE Manager (Canadian Journalists for free expression)

6- Katherine Govier Freelance writer, professor

7- John Kernaghan The Hamilton Spectator reporter

8- Marta Soltys Writer

9- Terry Asma The Hamilton Spectator photographer

10- Margaret Mironowicz The Hamilton Spectator reporter

11- Wade Hemsworth Reporter

12- Shaun Herron The Hamilton Spectator news editor

13- Mohsin Abbas The Hamilton Spectator reporter

14-Ashoke Dasgupta Freelance reporter

15-Petronila Cleto Writer from McMaster university

16- Sakhi Oruzgani Writer

17- Yar Sana Edito-in chief of Andisha-e-naw

18- Consuelo Sardon Professor

19- Baskey T RajJohn Reporter

20-ZangChro Zand freelance writer

21-Shamnam Janani Salam Toronto reporter

22-Milan Marki writer

23-Savia Raagopta Content editor

24- Ignafiow Sellih reporter

25-Tanveer Khan freelance writer

26-Hamid Zarabi editor-in-chief of Ashian

27- Khalid A. reporter

28- Nikash Amit Human rights activist

29-Carole Liu

30-Samina Tauhid

31-Muhammad Abid

32-Emma Bellran

33- Edna Amardor

34- Ani Yilolorim

35- Nadeem Chaudhry

36- Fahim Naqui

37- Kaziwa Salih Freelance writer

38- Sara Perks Reporter

39- Mohammad Qasim Wafayezadah writer

40- Yar M Taraki MA artist

41- Agnes Bongers The Hamilton spectator weekend readers editor

42- Ross Longbottom reporter

43- Hussain Zahedi reporter

44- Amir Hamza Haidari Afghan- Australian journalist

45- Pedro Valdez President of Human Rights Press

46- Mir Hussain Mahdavi reporter

Afghan reporter sentenced to death

A court in the northern Afghanistan sentenced an Afghan reporter to death Tuesday for defaming Islam.The court found local newspaper reporter Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, guilty of blasphemy.The trial was held behind closed door in Mazar-e-Sharif, the northern city of Balkh province without the reporter’s defense lawyer present. His brother, fellow journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, told Reporters Without Borders: "I saw my brother leave the court. He was very anxious. All the family was, too."Sayed Perwiz was arrested the middle of October. The arrest came after conservative religious leaders contended that one of his article published on Jahan-e-Naw ( the New World) newspaper is against Islam.

‘Taliban are freedom fighters’: Afghan Post newspaper

Who are the Taliban? Are they freedom fighters or terrorists? Are they fighting to save Afghanistan against strangers or killing innocent civilians?
Afghan Post columnist Gholam Mohay-aldin Razmwal raises this important question. Razmwal has continued indentifying Muslim clerics(Mulla), because he believes Taliban are clerics( in Farsi, Talib means a person who studies Islamic knowledge).
He has described the negative role of mullas in past 14 centuries in Afghanistan. With this introduction, he declares that Taliban have the historical and religious responsibly of fighting for freedom.
But he hasn’t said anything about what was happening during Taliban regime, instead he attached a religious role for Taliban movement as religious clerics.
Osama caused problems between U.S and Taliban government in 2001, he says. But he believes U.S. President George Bush hadn’t proved show Osama was behind the September 11 atttack. Bush just was making a reason to capture Afghanistan and he did, Razmwal says.
In this article, he tries to create a religious and positive image for Taliban, accusing the U.S and its coalition of fighting against Afghans benefits.
Afghan Post publishes monthly in Toronto area. This article was published in Its November issue.

I flee certain death in Afghanistan

In late 2001, after the Taliban lost power and at the beginning of Hamid Karzai's presidency, the new Afghanistan government passed a freedom of speech law. It was to allow Afghans to speak freely.
Under the new conditions allowing a free press, many newspapers and magazines were born. After about six months, 104 print media were registered. I was one of the Afghans to start publishing a newspaper, with a big hope of democracy and believing we had freedom of speech.
I was editor- in chief of the Afghan weekly newspaper "Aftab" -- The Sun. Aftab was publishing in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city, from early 2002 to 2003. Aftab was an independent newspaper.
Aftab began publishing editorials and opinion pieces increasingly critical of former mujahedeen commanders (warlords) and religious leaders in Kabul, especially those involved in fighting in Kabul in the early 1990s.
Former mujahedeen hold the majority of power in the government of President Hamid Karzai. The articles criticized a range of people, including Minister of Defence Mohammad Qasim Fahim, Minister of Education Younis Qanooni, Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, and prominent religious leader Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf.
For example, in its March 18, 2003, issue, Aftab published an article about connections between religion and military power in Afghanistan, claiming that religious leaders "legitimized" warlordism.
In its March 27 issue, Aftab published an article strongly critical of former president Rabbani, with a pencil drawing of Rabbani destroying houses in Kabul in the early 1990s, and an article critical of Sheikh Mohammad Asef Mohseni, a mujahedeen leader and original head of the political organization Harakat-e Islami.
In the first week of April, Aftab published an article entitled Secularism as a Third Approach, and in the next issue, on April 12, an article critical of the conservatism and past military activities of Sayyaf and his party, Ittihad-e Islami.
Aftab became a target of harassment and death threats in March 2003 after publishing those and other articles critical of mujahedeen commanders and conservative religious leaders. Electricity to Aftab's office was cut off at the end of March on the orders of the agriculture minister who had also been criticized in the newspaper.
After running an article on mujahedeen chief Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf on April 9, I started getting anonymous warning calls. Most of them told me: "You published an article on the esteemed Sayyaf and you insulted him. You are going to pay for that ... it is easy for us to kidnap you."
I received another call the same day warning that all of my family will be massacred. Warnings also came from the national security department and some political parties.
A conservative journalist, who was editor of a mujahedeen publication, warned me on April 15: "I'm the one who told them not to harm you, but now it's more than I can handle. Be careful that you don't regret what you do."
The death threats stepped up on April 16. An anonymous caller told me: "We are following you like your shadow. We can kill you without any problem." Aftab had just published an article calling for a secular government in Afghanistan. When I went to the information ministry the next day, the deputy minister gave me a letter of recommendation for the interior ministry.
A senior police officer came to the newspaper's office a few days later and offered to protect me. But at their next meeting, the police officer told me that protection had been denied on the orders of senior interior ministry officials who believed that I had insulted the people and Islam and should bear the consequences.
Fearing that I could be murdered, I contacted many Afghan and international organizations to support me.
Aftab had published two articles -- Holy Fascism and Religion + State = Despotism -- raising questions about Islam's place in politics and methods of interpreting religious texts, and criticizing Afghan religious leaders. Sayyaf was reportedly apoplectic when he heard about my last article, Holy Fascism. The response was swift. Clerics loyal to Sayyaf, including Afghanistan's chief justice, Fazl Ahmad Shinwari, managed to convince President Karzai to allow my deputy and me to be arrested, on the grounds that my articles were blasphemous.
To prove this, they pointed to the remainder of the article, in which I suggested that the general history of Islam in Afghanistan had been almost entirely accompanied by violence and repression, and asked tough questions about why ordinary Muslims were bound by clerics' interpretations of Islamic law. This was a sort of Luther-like challenge to Islamic fundamentalism.
Under the pressure of the fundamentalists, clerics and mujahedeens, Karzai signed the order for my arrest.
On June 17, my deputy, Ali Sistani, and I were arrested and the Supreme Court of Afghanistan charged us with the crime of "insulting Islam," or blasphemy. Kabul police searched and then closed Aftab's offices, and Afghanistan's intelligence agency confiscated remaining copies of the newspaper from local bookstores.
The existing penal code of Afghanistan does not define blasphemy, but provides that certain crimes relating to Islam are punishable under Shariah (Islamic law). Crimes under Shariah are not codified or defined under Afghan law, but under most interpretations of shari'a, blasphemy is a serious offence, sometimes punishable by death.
"Mahdavi and Sistani would be tried on the allegation of insulting Islam," deputy chief justice Fazel Ahmad Manavi said in an interview with Radio Liberty on June 19, "and that international pressure could do nothing to stop the government from pursuing the case."
The Supreme Court decided to issue a death penalty for me but because of international pressure on the Afghan government, the news of my death sentence was not made public.
The pressure of the international community on Afghanistan about our case was high; The United Nations was especially putting pressure on the Afghan government.
Under this pressure, Karzai signed a release order for us. The next day, Afghan Intelligence Service made a big case to arrest me again. I have also faced terrorists who were looking for my death.
I left Afghanistan with a broken heart but I know my motherland needed me alive .
Mir Hussain Mahdavi is a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator and a part of The Spectator's foreign-trained journalist project.