Please raise money (Mr. Hosseini, please use the profits from your book, and Paramount Pictures - from your movies) to free these actors and their families from the fate of Afghanistan. Their safety should be more important than the Box Office. These are actual humans lives at risk...it is not just a story anymore.
Boys and their families should be evacuated from Afghanistan on ASAP basis. This is morally and legally not correct to use them, pay them and leave them there to die for no good reason.
Why should these kids have to suffer for the rest of their lives (quite possibly) for acting in a film? Merely because of social misunderstand? I think not.
I recently viewed a preview of The Kite Runner film during the SIBA bookseller's convention in Atlanta, Georgia and heard about this petition from a fellow author. Though the film was a brilliant, flawless, and sent a powerful message, I as an author, bookseller, book club leader, and mother fear for those boys. Let us do something to help these protect them and do what is morally right. Though I do not feel the film would have been as powerful without that scene, as a mother I feel the film will never be accepted fully if these children's rights are now protected.Tiara wearing and Book sharing,Kathy L. PatrickFounder of the Pulpwood Queens' Book Clubswww.beautyandthebook .com
Come on, Viacom. You're going to make a mint on this film. The boys are the film. Very bad PR move if you don't help these kids.
Paramount has to pay to bring the boys and their families to America. Help get them visas. It's the least they can do. They have to care about the well-being of their actors.
Dear Bennett Walsh and Rebecca Yeldham (producers of the film): Please delete the rape scene from the film. To leave it in the film is to doom this family's future.
It is ironic that the novelist helped many readers understand Afghan culture and the tragedy the country has lived through, but the film makers seem oblivious to the danger posed to the child actors _by this culture_ as a result of depicting the events in the novel. The boys deserve protection AND more pay.
If you have read the book, you can see how real the problems in it are. If you feel like, in these times, you're made out to be some asshole American, some North American scum, then prove everyone wrong. Take part in something important and know that you can be changing lives just by lazily surfing the internet like you do everyday I'm sure (I know I do). The problems in Afghanistan are much more important than this war in Iraq. Everyone knows that. So do something about it if you have the heart to give.
Please have some sympathy towards these children. You cannot judge their situation by western standards because these children are not american actors...
The actors should be payed at least double what they were, and be saved from persecution.
As the us so often praises that they freed afghanistan, this just proves they didn't and left it in turmoil. A danger for the kids and their families is real and they shouldn't live fear in fear. Save those boys!
Please help these boys. They deserve more than this backlash they are facing. Both boys deserve a proper education and future. I hope people out there read about this and what ever power they have, use that to make sure these boys get a good future.
Khaled, Marc, I know you will do everything in your power to help the boys. How else can I help? My love goes out to you, Zikeria, Ali and Ahmad. Doostat dAram.
