Action Alert: Afghan youth denied U.S. visa
The Fellowship of Reconciliation was deeply saddened to receive the following information today from peace colleagues in Afghanistan. We ask our supporters to take action to respond to a visa denial just issued by the U.S. State Department.
Abdulai recently applied for a U.S. visa, having received an invitation by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (USA) for a peace tour of the United States this summer. He was hoping to meet his new friends face-to-face, as human beings do. Sadly, the most “powerful” nation on earth rejected him, for fear that he might not return to his widowed Afghan mother and to the only home he’s known — in a mountain village in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
“I know that others would have you think that my mother, my brothers, and I are bad people, but you should know that we’re just as sick of narrow-minded violence and corrupt, lying officials as you are.” Abdulai wants to talk about all these things, but he has not been given the space.
No space on earth? Since the U.S. government has not allowed Abdulai to meet his friends in the United States, is there any country on earth in 2010 that is prepared to host Abdulai and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers together with Palestinian, Israeli Jewish, Iraqi, American, and other international peacemakers?
If you could help in any way to make this journey possible for these ordinary people, please contact us at journeytosmile@gmail.com or Mark Johnson at FOR; or by requesting your peace-seeking government to host Abdulai and his international friends, so we can have those warm conversations that give life meaning and love.
Abdulai will be journeying with other Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and other peacemaker friends from the United States — from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and the Contagious Love Experiment) and the Middle East (Combatants for Peace) to give voice to those everyday hopes of ordinary people everywhere, as he discovers his voice to say :
“I am capable of speaking the plain truths, even if I tremble before the elders.”
This inner voice in Abdulai is now an urgent rumble, and if you would join him in speaking to the world, we and Abdulai may just hear the growing thunder, the thunder of humankind’s conscience.
