Official delegation from Children First Now to the Afghan ambassador in Sweden.
Brishnan is not alone, we will support her.
Brishna is a 10 year old girl who was sexually molested by the clergy in Kunduz Her family decided to kill her to defend the family honour and in the process Brishna was injured. She is currently being held by a quasi-governmental agency.
After the tragic news spread the Children First Now institution started a campaign to save her as a symbol of the rights of children in Afghanistan.
The meeting took place on Friday 21 November 2014 and involved a three-member panel of the Children First Now institution: Parvin Salimi, Kivan Rezai and myself, Karim Shahmohammad. Before we went to embassy we talked about what we should doing to produce a successful outcome. We were not sure whether meeting the embassy would be helpful but we had to do it because that is one of the important ways of saving Brishna’s life. Finally we got to the embassy. We met the ambassador and explained why we had come.
Hamid Hami, the Afghan ambassador in Sweden, and his first assistant came to the meeting. After a welcome and introductions, we talked about our institution’s goals and the importance of protecting the rights of children: We are the campaign to save Brishna’s life. Also we mentioned that we had already sent a letter to the embassy about it. We also mentioned the case of another 3 year old girl, who had been raped by young boys, a heart-rending story.
The ambassador aligned himself with this feeling and said: ‘We knew about these sad events, that is tragic, but I cannot believe the story about the 3 year old, it is unbelievable!’
We asked: what is your government’s plan to solve this problem? What’s your plan for saving Brishna’s life? A mullah raped Brishna and her family want to kill her. You have to support their child. Where is your sense of responsibility? We have been trying to save the girl, we have contacted the Red Cross, the UN, Amnesty International, and two party organizations operating in Afghanistan and which are also active in Sweden, Save the Children, the Swedish Foreign Ministry, and now two families have announced that they are willing to adopt Brishna, a family in Canada and another one in Sweden. If the law allowed it, I myself would have adopted Brishna and brought her out of the country. However we are available to escort Brishna out of Afghanistan. In any case we have taken all the necessary legal steps to remove Brishna from Afghanistan, we hope you will support us.
Mr Hamid replied that social context, and decades of war in Afghanistan and the Taliban, are responsible for these incidents. ‘We are human and I agree with you but to get out of this disaster we need to find a legal means to send her to a foreign country, and that’s what makes this task difficult. The first problem is that the law in Afghanistan does not allow you to adopt and parents have to give permission. But this issue is not just for Afghanistan, it happens in other countries, even in Europe and other parts of the world, and if you look at our neighbours, we see that Afghani children who have taken refuge there do not have normal and good life.
I said, yes, these disasters also happen in Europe but only one or two cases, it’s not the same as Afghanistan, and for children this is too much. You mentioned Iran, yes, the Islamic laws say, as you know, that women and children do not have human rights like men, however in Iran Afghani immigrants do not have any human rights because of racism. In your opinion, what do you call this type of situation, other than pure racism and fascism against children?’
I continued: We are also aware that at the root of social aggression and violence, despite the war and the Taliban, are local traditions, but the question is: what are the things you have put in place as first steps in order to overcome this disaster? Also we believe in universal and modern rights for all children who are without parents and we have also tried to support vulnerable children for example the kidnapped Nigerian girls, Sudanese mothers with their children who were awaiting stoning by the Islamic government, but both women were freed from prison because people protested and stopped the stoning. Every day we support other children wherever they are, we have to protect the children and give them a decent life.
However Brishna has to be protected from her family and she has to be sent to a place of safety, and it’s the responsibility of Afghanistan.
Finally, the ambassador said, as I mentioned in the first place, that it is necessary to change the social and cultural context. Secondly, there is no legal way to remove Brishna and we will send notes of this meeting to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
After we left the Embassy and as we walked along, our discussion centered on rescuing Brishna.
We had to visit the embassy as a first step but the campaign to save Brishna will continue.
Children First Now
2014-11-23
