Jul 14 2012

You’d like a prison pen pal

Categories:

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?

This post has no tag

10 comments

Skip to comment form ↓

1

julietdefarge

14 July 2012 at 9:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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

14 July 2012 at 9:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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

14 July 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@ #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

ChristineRose

14 July 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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

Crissa

14 July 2012 at 11:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Yeah, I was wondering about the children’s stationary, too…
6

clastum3

15 July 2012 at 1:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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.
7

FieseZahnfee

15 July 2012 at 5:24 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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.
8

John Morales

15 July 2012 at 5:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

[meta]

FieseZahnfee, you’d written the seventh comment, and one could do both.
9

joehoffman

15 July 2012 at 6:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

What does “code” mean, here? Is he smuggling out a secret message?
10

jorchard

17 July 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

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