ELA 12

Vogel- The Kite Runner

Name:________________________________________________________________________ pd________ Date:______________

Star of The Kite Runner is forced into exile in Sweden after Taliban threats forced him from his
Afghan home1
by Jenny Stanton For Mailonline , Aug. 23, 2015
Afghan star Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada played Hassan in The
Kite Runner. In one scene, which his family asked to be cut,
he is raped by another boy. Ahmad received threats from the
Taliban and was forced to ee his country. Smugglers
helped him reach Sweden where he lives with a foster
family. The Afghan star of the Oscar-nominated lm, The
Kite Runner, was forced to ee is home after the
controversial rape scene led to threats from the Taliban.
Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada was just 12 years old when he
shot to fame for his role of young Hassan, who is raped by a
bully in the Golden Globe-winning movie.

Despite warnings from his family that the scene would put their lives at risk, it was still included and he ed Afghanistan
with the help of ruthless people smugglers. Ahmad's family said the scene would offend Afghans and worried it would stir
ethnic tensions because it plays on stereotypes of ethnic groups - pitting a Pashtun bully against a lower-class Hazara boy.

Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and the Hazara minorities were among several ethnic-based factions that
fought bitterly during the country's post-Soviet era civil war. Thousands of Hazaras were slain as the predominantly Pashtun
Taliban seized power in the mid-1990s.

Ahmad, who earned just 9,000 for his role, claims producers agreed to delete the rape scene, but it was still included in
the nal cut, according to The Telegraph. The lm was banned in Afghanistan and Ahmad and his father lived in exile in
Dubai for two years, paid for by the lm company. The rest of his family were unable to obtain visas despite claiming they
were being threatened by the Taliban, so they returned. Ahmad, now 17, told The Telegraph that on one occasion, a brick
was thrown through his car window in Kabul and the attacker shouted abuse at him for featuring in the lm.

The child star was then smuggled 4,000 miles to Sweden. He swam across the border from Belarus and sometimes went
without food for two days during the treacherous journey. He now lives in Borlange, in Sweden, with a foster family, plays
for the local football team and dreams of going to lm school.

Ahmad was surprised by the positive comments he received in Sweden for his role in the lm. 'When people found out that
I was the guy who was in Kite Runner, they all told me what a good job I did,' he told The Telegraph. 'They never expected
that an actor from The Kite Runner would be a refugee in Sweden.'

G rown-up: Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada lives in Sweden with a foster family and dreams of going to lm school

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207658/Star-Kite-Runner-forced-exile-Sweden-Taliban-threats-forced-Afghan-home.html