Saturday, February 03, 2007

Lets get Nabil out of Iraq

I know there are hundreds of thousands of 'Nabils' in Iraq today, but I heard his voice on the radio this morning describing the conditions he (and the whole of his country) are living under and felt moved by it. His blog details such horrors as the neighbours being blown away by mortar shells while Nabil and one of his brothers were playing soccer in their adjacent backyard. Murder, torture, kidnappings are just part of the everyday it seems. He writes:

I live in fear everyday, I wake up in fear, and I sleep the night in fear too, few days ago I stopped going to college, because the road to college is very dangerous, fake police check-points are everywhere and at any moment they can stop me and ask for my ID and once they see that I'm a Sunni they would have me killed or kidnapped or tortured, because they can figure it out from my name and my address (my district is a sunni district), and the 2nd reason why I stopped going to college, is that in Monday (20th Nov. 2006) two police patrols attacked our college building, and opened fire on the outer gate of the college for nearly 15 minutes, then they stopped after they injured some guards of the college, and they left immediatly without giving excuses for what they did.


Nabil, who is 19 years old, is trying to get out of Iraq to continue his studies (and being alive) in New Zealand. Both his parents attended Cambridge University in the 1980's and his brother has made it to New York. While there is a flood of refugees streaming out of this disintegrating country we can help one of them ourselves by donating to Nabil's Escape Fund which is also linked to his blog.

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