Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

I want to honor the memory of the people who saved my family by saving this family--at risk every bit as much as mine. gofundme.com/manage/please-…. We've had good luck raising money for them: people are generous. But we haven't got them out of Afghanistan to safety.

https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/1461406432759357451

They are eligible, under every relevant international convention, for asylum. But getting them to a safe place where they can claim asylum has proven almost impossible. (I won't use the word "impossible.")

Most countries observe international refugee law in principle, but in practice, set up such massive physical barriers between refugees and places they might claim asylum that it is effectively very near hopeless. (This was true when my grandparents were alive, too.)

So I'm once again issuing an appeal: Is there anyone out there, in any safe country, who knows how to get this family from Kabul to a safe country in which they can apply for asylum? One where the girls can continue their education and leave their homes?

One where they don't fear they'll be assassinated every time there's a knock on the door?
This family deserves a chance at life just as much as my family did.

They're not "famous intellectuals," but frankly, it was grotesque that the only people they tried to save were the "famous intellectuals."

I don't mean to diminish the heroism of saving the famous intellectuals, *especially* because I'm only alive because they did. I just means there were a lot of "unknown intellectuals," and "ordinary, decent men and women" who perished---and their lives were just as important--

to them, and in the eyes of God.
This is a good, decent family. They are not famous intellectuals, but who knows, given a chance, what they might become. Their mother was a women's rights activist and lawyer. Their father worked for a French NGO as a field health worker.

They have five daughters and a son. The youngest daughter is only five years old. The girls are prisoners in the house in which they're hiding. They had been in school, in university--planning to become lawyers like their mother. Not anymore.

The family is terrified, depressed, hopeless. They feel entirely forgotten by the world. The men their mother put behind bars for their crimes against women are roaming free. The people who've contributed to the fundraiser are ensuring they don't starve---

for which they're immensely grateful--but they're prisoners, with no future, facing violent retaliation for the "crimes" of working with a French healthcare NGO to help vaccinate rural Afghans; defending women against men who beat, rapes, and abused them; and going to school.

Please help me figure out a way to help them. If you found the story of Justus Rosenberg moving, use it as your moral guide. Generations later, their children and grandchildren will remember you. And you will be the example of decency and heroism for them that Rosenberg is to me.

@RitaFrenchFCDO, @peaceforasia, @KarenMartinon
@Baroness_Nichol, @david_martinon,
@AmbassadeKaboul, @francediplo, @AClaireLegendre, @Armees_Gouv, @JY_LeDrian, if you have any questions or suggestions, please DM.

@IlvesToomas, what about Estonia? Might Estonia be able to help?