Contributor

Ramin Mazhar is, a poet, journalist, and human rights activist from Afghanistan. He graduated from the Persian language and literature program at Kabul university and has worked for 8AM Daily Newspaper and Afghanistan Independent Human Commission.

Two years ago, during peace negotiation talks between the US government and the Taliban, Ramin organized and performed an art program at Kabul University in protest. He said to the audience that in those talks, victims of war, women, and Afghanistan are completely ignored. He also expressed the pain and frustration of millions of Afghans who thought that the peace talks would hand the country back to the Taliban, and that the progress over the last twenty years related to democratic values and basic human rights would be eliminated.

That program and protest gained lots of attention and support among media, policy makers and politicians.

“Kiss you amid the Taliban and you don’t fear,” one of Mahzar's highly political poems, which was posted on social media during those talks, was read and shared by millions of users in Afghanistan and Iran. His poem brought diverse social groups and activists together to work on supporting the voices of youth and victims of war so that they can be heard in peace talks and beyond.

Later the poem turned into a song by young singer Ghawgha Tanban. After her, a dozen other singers from Afghanistan and Iran sang the song to show their resistance and struggle against oppression and extremism. Mazhar’s poems have a huge audience in both Afghanistan and Iran, and often combine a mixture of love and protest against religious fundamentalism and war.