Afghan government official says that student will not be executed
Condemned student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will not face execution according to sources in Afghanistan, following a huge wave of protests which erupted after the sentence was passed down to the student for downloading and distributing documents from the internet which supported women's rights.
The protests which have rained down from all directions appear to have had some impact:
Afghanistan's constitution incorporates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines free speech, which is why this statement is to be cautiously welcomed. However, the Afghanistan constitution also enshrines Sharia law which forbids criticising the Prophet Mohamed, which creates an obvious dichotomy here, not unlike the dichotomy created by Britain's ancient law of blasphemy. It appears odd to me that we can claim to have a system in which you can say anything and yet be subject to the crime of blasphemy if you say certain things about God.A ministerial aide, Najib Manalai, insisted: "I am not worried for his life. I'm sure Afghanistan's justice system will find the best way to avoid this sentence."
It was the clearest indication yet that the 23-year-old will have his death penalty revoked amid mounting international pressure on the Afghan authorities.
President Hamid Karzai's staff said he had been inundated by appeals from pressure groups across the globe to pardon the student journalist.
The President is "concerned" about the case and is "watching the situation very closely", his spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said. But he added: "There is a judicial process ongoing."
However, to return to the subject at hand, it would appear that this young man's life will actually be spared, which is to be welcomed.
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6 comments:
Thank God for The Independent.
Thank God the world isn't full of people like yourself who think, "that some kind of ridiculous online petition is gong to have any influence on anything".
This has come about because, "President Hamid Karzai's staff said he had been inundated by appeals from pressure groups across the globe to pardon the student journalist."
The protests obviously did have some influence on something.
I'm sure protests in general (particularly diplomatic ones) did have some effect, just as I'm sure that 31k online form submissions had no effect.
You're talking about 31k people who couldn't be bothered to physically sign their name to a piece of paper, and could only be bothered enough to type in a name and hit submit. There's outrage for you.
More importantly, anybody can put in anybody else's name on an online petition, automated bots can be used to mass submit, and different IPs can easily be used, assuming that the developer's cared enough to even weed out suspicious entries. Online petitions are absolutely meaningless.
Ah, having argued that protest was a waste of time you now try to make out that I am arguing that this happened simply because of The Independent's campaign - the 31k people as you call them.
The point is that protest - from all over the world - worked. And a young man's life will be spared.
Were it left to people like you this would have been deemed "a waste of time".
I said all along that the online petition was a waste of time. You claimed it wasn't.
Considering that this petition was quoted in Parliament, it obviously contributed in some way to the pressure on the British government to act.
And your point was that all protest was a waste of time, and amounted to little more than "silly slogans", you certainly did not limit your complaint to "online petitions" as you are now claiming.
Indeed, you claimed it would "have about as much influence as all the wasted hours you've spent marching around London or picketing outside some American airbase shouting silly slogans - absolutely none."
In your book marches are a waste of time and Martin Luther King should have stayed in his bed for all the good he achieved.
Better to leave it to the politicians... as the people's view in a democracy appears to count for little in your world.
The truth is that people's protests have had an impact here, in that it spurred politicians into action.
Protest sometimes works, Jason. And, in this case, you have no way of measuring what impact this poll or any of the many other protestations had. But the fact is that the decision has now been reversed.
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