Registan.net

My involvement with Global Voices is one of those things I am deeply proud of, yet rarely write about. I met some incredible writers and free speech activists from Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America at the Budapest Summit last week. One guy I didn’t meet, whom I wish had more of a chance to discuss what he does with a Western audience, is Nasim Fekrat. In short, he travels around Afghanistan, arranging his own funding to run blogger workshops (which includes help for blogging anonymously) and advocates free speech and citizen’s media online. He is the exact kind of person Global Voices tries to support and encourage, and I respect him tremendously (and is a regular feature of my roundups at Global Voices).

Now meet Nasim Fekrat’s profile in Slate:

Fekrat’s facial features are distinctly Mongoloid, in accordance with his Hazara heritage. His skin is rough and his look rugged, powerful in a primitive way; a rack of oversize teeth is arranged in what might best be described as a rebellious manner.

So he’s a primitive-looking mongoloid with buck teeth? How the hell did those sentences get past an editor? The rest of the profile is great, highlighting the ways in which he is exactly the kind of Public Intellectual 2.0 Daniel Drezner has gone on about before. And incredibly courageous, too—Fekrat works against a deeply engrained tradition against free speech, and challenges a lot of conservative mindsets in the process. But geez, easy on the 19th century racial psysiognomy next time, okay?

Fekrat’s photos, which are at times haunting and at times really funny, are here.

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