(Great News! Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

[jgmacg]

…for our friend and colleague Gabriele Torsello, who has been abducted in Afghanistan. If you’re a journalist, he’s your colleague, too. Nicknamed Kash, he is a good man, as compassionate as he is courageous; a photojournalist who has only ever tried in his work to reveal the truth of human love and of human suffering. His work, in Kashmir and Nepal and elsewhere, is here:

http://www.kashgt.co.uk/

And the latest on the story of his abduction is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1926520,00.html

That his kidnappers want to swap Gabriele, a Christian who became a Muslim, for an Afghani Muslim who became a Christian, reveals somehow the absurdity of those labels and illuminates the greater failings of religious hatred.

I know we argue the war in general terms here, and as a sidebar to political theory. But however you may feel about this war, or about God, please hold Kash in your heart.

UPDATE: Please sign the petition calling for his release at Reporters Without Borders:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19323

I've posted this on the Journalism Board as well. If you don't want it d_b'ed, mods, feel free to take one down. I just wanted as many of us as possible to see it.

 

[indiansnetwork]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

Sorry to hear he was abducated. Hopefully he is alright and will come back home to the U.S soon.

 

[audreyld]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

Sorry to hear he was abducated. Hopefully he is alright and will come back home to the U.S soon.

Abducated? Was he kidnapped and forced to give up his throne?

Seriously, though, he has some amazing work and I hope for his safe return.

 

[joe]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

That would be abdicated, no?

 

[audreyld]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

It was a bit of a joke, Joe. Like when you combine two words (in this case unintentionally with indiansnetwork's mangling of abducted to be a homonym of abdicated) and bring together the two meanings.

I was just trying to be a wee bit clever.

 

[markvid]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

Sorry to hear he was abducated. Hopefully he is alright and will come back home to the U.S soon.

Do you even know how to read?
Where does it say he is from the US?

 

[audreyld]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

Sorry to hear he was abducated. Hopefully he is alright and will come back home to the U.S soon.

Do you even know how to read?
Where does it say he is from the US?

His posts read like Flowers for Algernon, only not in the "fine literature" way...

 

[Rosie]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

To get this thread back on track....

Many, many prayers for his safe return.

 

[audreyld]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

I don't know the man personally, but I will say he has produced some tremendous work. I'm sorry to see a fellow photog (and such a talented one) in a situation like this.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: Hold a good thought, please...

Thanks, everybody. I'll post updates this weekend as they come in. Here's the petition from Reporters Without Borders. You can sign on behalf of Kash's release.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19323

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Update) Hold a good thought, please...

Update: I'll be bouncing this up the board as often as I can this weekend. The folks negotiating for Kash's release think that a show of broad support for him, in the form of petitions and so forth from the global journalism community, will be very helpful. Please sign it yourself, and, if you can, let others know that a colleague of ours is in real trouble. Thanks.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Update) Hold a good thought, please...

Nothing new as of this morning, but the negotiations are ongoing. Please take a look at Kash's work, and sign the petition if you can. Thanks.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Update) Hold a good thought, please...

Bouncing this back to the top with an update.


http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-10-23_1234294.html

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Update) Hold a good thought, please...

This morning's dispatch from Afghanistan:

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.352831544&par=

Please sign the petition on Kash's behalf. Thanks.

 

[markvid]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

May I ask this one thing?
Why are they negotiating with terrorists?
What could they give the terrorists? I don't think Italy is going to pull out troops over this.
And doesn't that set a bad precedent?

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

May I ask this one thing?
Why are they negotiating with terrorists?
What could they give the terrorists? I don't think Italy is going to pull out troops over this.
And doesn't that set a bad precedent?

Fair question.

It's unlikely that Kash was snatched by terrorists. The kidnappers still haven't identified themselves. Or having done so, it hasn't made the wires. Even the Taliban have disavowed them, so it's hard to say whether they're jihadis or nationalists or simply criminal opportunists. The Italian government will not, of course, accede to any of the demands that have been made public so far - swap Kash for a Muslim apostate; pull the troops out of Afghanistan.

Hence, they're probably not "terrorists" per se. More likely what they want is money.

As to the precedent this may or may not set, I think it depends completely on the case. Certainly the embassy or consulate or NGO or local government must take a kidnapper's call if someone's been spirited away. And then keep them talking as long as they can, until they figure out who they're dealing with and how best to get the abducted home.

This kind of abduction is now common across the middle east and the subcontinent. A Spanish photographer was snatched in Gaza just this morning. Political? Criminal? Who knows?

 

[markvid]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

Thanks, jgmacg.
Obviously, you know I'm not asking that to be confrontational, I'm genuinely curious.
But I do hope he gets out safely.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

It was a perfectly reasonable question MarkVid. Here's this morning's news:

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-10-25_1256069.html

 

[JayFarrar]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

I signed the petition yesterday.
I got a note back in French thanking me.

 

[jgmacg]

Re: (Petition/Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

I signed the petition yesterday.
I got a note back in French thanking me.

Bien sur. Reporters San Frontieres is a French organization. But the National Union of Journalists in Britain; and PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Reporters Committee for a Free Press here in the States have all been working on this. Thanks for signing.