"We just want your truthful and spiritual support."

In Quill, Bruce Swaffield interviews Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, "a reporter based in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. He was trained by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and has dedicated his life to telling the truth. Currently, his brother is serving a 20-year prison sentence for blasphemy against Islam."

His experience is yet more proof that the one thing on which even the deadliest enemies agree is denying and punishing free speech.

Due to misunderstandings of the international community, namely the United States on the situation in Afghanistan, the values of democracy, especially freedom of speech, have been getting worse since 2005 in Afghanistan. The field of information is under control of many factions.

All the factions have made a very dangerous circle around freedom of speech. It is very dangerous for a journalist to get out the right and correct information from this hell and to process a balanced story for a newspaper.

Warlords are afraid of freedom of speech because if there is really freedom for the media, then [warlords] would be faced with war crimes tribunals when their crimes are revealed by the media.

The government controls the field of information. [The government] is corrupted and does not want a newspaper to write about the corruption in all stages of the regime.

Mullahs are ideologically against all the values of democracy; they also are the physical enemies of TV.

International troops don’t want the correct facts and figures of civilian casualties to be covered exactly by the media. The position of the Taliban against freedom of information is clear to everyone.

All the factions have come together and made a limitation for the media.

He goes on to describe injustices that won't surprise anyone familiar with how reporters are treated in war zones, but his request for help might:

The first thing is we realize any journalist has a strong influence inside their society. Now the U.S. is the biggest supporter of Afghanistan, and when we face a death sentence or are imprisoned, please don’t be silent. Put pressure on your government to talk about it (even single cases) with the Afghan government and resolve that [issue]. We don’t want money or anything else. Please, we just want your truthful and spiritual support.

You have a very long background of democracy. You have suffered what we are suffering now, and you know how to support us in each situation. We are fighting here for what you wanted in your society 300 years ago. So our goals are the same, but we need support.

Without freedom of speech and mind, nothing is possible for a society [to move] towards democracy.

Read the whole thing. Then help spread the word.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ...