You’d like a prison pen pal


Alexander Aan has been thrown into prison for blasphemy, but he still has some contact with the world. He has sent a message out:

You can write back. The Atheist Alliance will forward email to him, and a little correspondence might let him know the world is watching. Also, someone imprisoned for blasphemy is probably the safest guy in the penal system to talk to, right?

Comments

  1. julietdefarge says

    I wonder if there’s a way to get him subscriptions to a few science magazines.
    Is he allowed contact with other prisoners? Any chance of him getting some basic textbooks and were allowed to teach science?

    I’m concerned about the Minang Atheists group that he was a part of. Hope they can conceal their identities.

  2. atheistallianceinternational says

    Thank you for posting again about Alex. You can send a message of support to Alex by emailing info [at] atheistalliance [dot] org with ‘Message for Alex’ in the subject line. We’re collecting messages that are delivered by a friend of Alex’s. If you’d like to support Alex further please write to the Indonesian authorities to protest at his treatment(http://atheistalliance.org/media/website/indonesian_contact.pdf) and you can donate to his legal/support fund via http://www.atheistalliance.org/support-aai/donate (choose Legal/Support Fund for Alex Aan)

  3. sadunlap says

    @ #2 atheistallianceinternational

    I have sent an e-mail message to Mr. Aan at the address specified.

    I also sent the following e-mail message to my Congressional representative, Nancy Pelosi (unfortunately, you will see a proofreading error that I only caught after I sent the message. If anyone else writes their rep, please learn from my mistake):

    The Honorable Nancy Pelosi,

    I wish to thank you for your efforts to aid the Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng. I would like for you to do the same for an Indonesian dissident, Alexander Aan.

    The Indonesian government has jailed Mr. Aan for nothing more than stating on his Facebook page that he does not think that God exists. Rather than charge him directly with blasphemy, the authorities charged him with Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions Law accusing him of deliberately spreading information inciting religious hatred and animosity.

    If Chen Guangcheng can come to the U.S. to escape persecution for his opinions so too does can Alexander Aan. Please contact Mr. Aan and please also request the Obama administration actively intercede on his behalf. Essentially, I am asking you to do a “repeat performance” of what you did for Chen Guangcheng.

    Thank you.

  4. says

    Is there some explanation of why he has Shaun the Sheep stationary? It looks like there is something on the back and that it was torn from a child’s activity book?

  5. clastum3 says

    The no. of comments on this thread compared with the 2 orders of magnitude higher no. on the latest round of Rebecca Watson histrionics above show where pharyngulite priorities lie. And I’m sure they’re right: we don’t want to be accused of islamophobic bigotry(TM) do we?

    Can’t quite suppress the thought, though, whether Pharyngula is the right place for any self-respecting atheist.

  6. FieseZahnfee says

    Yes, either that, or readers basically agree that Alexander Aan’s imprisonment is preposterous, and instead of writing hundreds of comments argueing if we should really get engaged in any of this or if it’s his own fault for being open about his lack of faith, everyone does what they can to help a little.

  7. John Morales says

    [meta]

    FieseZahnfee, you’d written the seventh comment, and one could do both.

  8. jorchard says

    Apparently, there is a petition to have Obama apply pressure,
    here
    (though it’s not responding right now).