Dorje Gurung '94 is freed by Qatar after international outcry

A swiftly assembled grassroots, global coalition of Grinnell College alumni and their allies likely helped win the freedom of a fellow graduate, Dorje Gurung, who had been jailed in Qatar under a charge of insulting Islam.

Gurung, 42, a native of Nepal, was nearing the end of a two-year stint teaching chemistry at Qatar Academy in Doha when he was arrested and detained May 1. He was not charged until May 9.

"All of us got a little bit worried," said Rupesh Pradhan, a fellow Grinnell grad and lifelong friend who attended school with Gurung in Nepal, Italy and Iowa, "because that can be a pretty devastating charge."

Pradhan, now CEO and president of his own IT consulting firm in Minneapolis, helped to rally Gurung's supporters across continents.

Their far-flung effort seems to have paid off. Gurung has been released and at this moment is on a plane bound for Kathmandu, Nepal. The charge against him reportedly has been dropped.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a University of Iowa law professor, was Gurung's classmate at Grinnell and helped to coordinate a legal defense.

"He just had a really good aura about him," Onwuachi-Willig said of her friend. "He's one of those people that you meet who's a genuinely good person."

The charge against the teacher, according to Gurung's supporters and news accounts, was sparked by confrontations last month with some of his 12-year-old students who had been taunting him. Despite the fact that Gurung is Nepalese, the boys called him Jackie Chan (after the Hong Kong movie star). They allegedly pulled his hair and shoved him.

"It actually got physical," said Pradhan, who coordinated release efforts with some of Gurung's fellow teachers in Doha. "It was not just verbal."

Gurung reportedly sat down with the students in question and tried to calmly reason with them. How would you feel, he asked them, if somebody stereotyped you as terrorists?

"That was the wrong thing to say in the wrong country," Pradhan said.

One of the student's parents reportedly complained, and the incident spiraled out of control until Gurung was perceived as having said unequivocally that all Muslims are terrorists.

So within a few days Onwuachi-Willig and others hired the best possible attorney in Qatar — Dr. Najeeb Al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister-turned-human rights activist — and drafted documents in Iowa to launch a nonprofit that would have been used to raise funds for the teacher's defense.

Gurung's supporters were daunted by the prospects of navigating Qatar's legal system. But it was good, Onwuachi-Wilig said, that Qatar has cultivated a reputation as a modern nation, and she "was hopeful that the leaders there would be concerned about the image of the country if this were to go further."

"I am very thankful to the Qatari government and leaders and to the administrators at the Qatar Academy for their work in ensuring Dorje's freedom," she added.

There was plenty of online clamor in Gurung's favor. An online petition, "Government of Qatar: Release Dorje Gurung," gathered nearly 14,000 signature within a few days. An open Facebook group, "Free Dorje Gurung — Grinnell College Supporters," attracted more than 300 members, and another "Free Dorje Gurung" page drew a couple thousand likes. There's also a tumblr page.

"There is no question that the awareness and the campaign done in these three days was what caused (Qatar) to say, 'We shouldn't touch this,'" Pradhan said.

The idea that somebody dedicated to education across cultures would have to wrangle with such an accusation left Pradhan stunned. Since his days in Grinnell, Gurung has worked in Malawi, Kazakhstan, Norway, Australia, Hong Kong and New Mexico.

"If there's an international, multicultural person in action, it's him," Pradhan said.

Gurung's own thumbnail bio on his website highlights his global view:

I am a Tibetan-Buddhist science teacher with a Jesuit education in a Hindu country (Nepal), an international education in a Catholic country (Italy), a liberal arts education in the bastion of freedom and democracy (the U.S.), with teacher-training down under (Australia), but whose choice of musical instrument is Australian (the didjeridoo), choice of sports is American