When the Taliban sent a gunman to shoot Malala Yousufzai in October last year as she rode home on a bus after school, they made clear their intention: to silence the teenager and kill off her campaign for girls’ education.
Nine months and countless surgical interventions later, she stood up at the UN on her 16th birthday on Friday to deliver a defiant riposte.
“They thought that the bullet would silence us, but they failed,” she said.
Photo: EPA
As 16th birthdays go, it was among the more unusual. Instead of blowing out candles on a cake, Malala sat in one of the UN’s main council chambers in the central seat usually reserved for world leaders.
She listened quietly as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described her as “our hero, our champion”; and as the former British prime minister and now UN education envoy Gordon Brown uttered what he called “the words the Taliban never wanted her to hear: Happy 16th birthday, Malala.”
The event, dubbed Malala Day, was the culmination of an extraordinary four years for the girl from Mingora, in the troubled Swat valley of Pakistan.
She was thrust into the public glare after she wrote a pseudonymous, but later celebrated blog for the BBC Urdu service describing her experiences struggling to get an education under the rising power of Taliban militants.
By 11, she was showing exceptional determination, calling personally on then-US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke to use his influence to combat the Taliban’s drive against education for girls. By 14, she was on the radar of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who put her forward for the international children’s peace prize, and by 15 she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee in history.
However, such dizzying global attention came at a price. Death threats followed her growing recognition, and on Oct. 9 last year, following a meeting of Pakistani Taliban leaders, the gunman was dispatched to remove what they called the “symbol of infidels and obscenity.”
Multiple operations in Pakistan and the UK followed the attack on the bus, including the fitting of a titanium plate on her left forehead, and a cochlear implant to restore her hearing. She now lives with her family in Birmingham and does what the Taliban tried to stop her doing: She goes to school every day.
“I am not against anyone,” she said in the UN chamber, having taken this day out from the classroom. “Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group.”
Malala responded to the violence of the Taliban with her own countervailing force: words against bullets.
“I do not even hate the Talib who shot me. Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him,” she said.
She spoke confidently, with only an injured eye and a slightly drooping left side of her face to hint at such fresh traumas. There was one other unstated allusion to the horror of her past: She wore a white shawl belonging to a woman who was also targeted by extremists, but who, unlike Malala, did not survive to tell the tale: former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“The extremists are afraid of books and pens,” the teenager said. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”
She cited last month’s attack on a hospital in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, and killings of female teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“That is why they are blasting schools every day — because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring to our society,” she said.
And she gave her own opposing interpretation of Islam to the Taliban’s.
“They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would send girls to hell just because of going to school. The terrorists are misusing the name of Islam and Pashtun society for their own personal benefits. Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood. Islam says that it is not only each child’s right to get education, rather it is their duty and responsibility,” she said.
Such ability to articulate what normally remains unarticulated — to give voice to young people normally silenced — has generated its own response.
The “stand with Malala” petition, calling for education for the 57 million children around the world who do not go to school, has attracted more than 4 million signatures — more than 1 million having been added in the past few days.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS