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    October 09, 2011

Afghan Female Lawmaker Stages Hunger Strike

   VOA News
   Visibly exhausted, Afghan lawmaker Semin Barakzai lays in her tent as
   she continues her hunger strike for an eighth consecutive day in Kabul,
   Afghanistan, Sunday October 9, 2011.
   Photo: AP
   Visibly exhausted, Afghan lawmaker Semin Barakzai lays in her tent as
   she continues her hunger strike for an eighth consecutive day in Kabul,
   Afghanistan, Sunday October 9, 2011.

   An ousted female Afghan lawmaker has mounted a hunger strike to protest
   her expulsion from parliament over alleged vote fraud in last year's
   parliamentary elections.
   Semin Barakzai has staged her political protest for more than a week in
   Kabul in a tent outside parliament.
   Dozens of lawmakers returned to parliament Saturday following a boycott
   of the disputed results of last year's elections.
   Afghanistan's election commission, in an effort to resolve nearly a
   year of disputes over widespread graft in the September 2010
   parliamentary polls, ousted nine politicians. Barakzai was one of them.
   She has vowed not to eat until she is reinstated.
   The French news agency quotes a doctor as saying Barakzai is in very
   poor physical condition from the lack of food.

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