News
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Simone De Beauvoir Prize bestowed upon Malala
* Father of 15-year-old says that Taliban lost the fightPARIS: Accepting a key French award on behalf of Malala Yousafzai on Wednesday, her father said, “The Taliban are fighting a lost cause and must accept peace talks.”
In a passionate speech after accepting the Simone De Beauvoir Prize for Womens’ Freedom on behalf of the 15-year-old, Ziauddin Yousafzai said that God and the world supported his daughter.
He said, “She fell but stood up and the whole world supported her.” He added, “God protected her and protected the cause for humanity and education.”
In an attack that shocked the world, Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban hitman as her school bus made its way through the town of Mingora in the valley of Swat, in October.
The bullet grazed her brain, coming within centimetres of killing her, travelling through her head and neck before lodging in her left shoulder. She was then treated in a British hospital.
Yousafzai said that the Taliban should now see the writing on the wall and learn from this incident.
He also said that if the Taliban wanted to impose their will they will have to kill 180 million people and that is impossible.
Despite coming from a male-dominated society, he quoted a woman Pakistani poet Rabia Basri who wrote: “There has been no lady prophet in history and no woman has been stupid enough to claim to be God.”
Yousafzai added, “In my part of the world, fathers are known by their sons. Daughters are very much neglected. I am one of the few fortunate fathers who is known by his daughter.”
Excerpts from Malala’s blog were read out and applauded by the audience.
An entry said, “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back to see if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”
Malala’s father also evoked the plight of an Indian medical student who was brutally gang-raped in New Delhi and died in a Singapore hospital.
Yousafzai’s daughter first rose to prominence at the age of 11 with a blog for the BBC’s Urdu-language service charting her life in Swat under the Taliban, whose two-year reign of terror supposedly came to an end there with an army operation in 2009.
Her attempted murder has sparked calls for her to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yousafzai also called for a change in global politics, saying that his country had suffered enormously in an era when “our children were orphaned, our women were widowed and our schools were lost”.
He added, “Lets have politics for the people. People should not be sacrificed at the altar of the state.”
President Asif Ali Zardari announced a $10 million donation for a global war chest to educate all girls by 2015 set up in Malala’s name last month.
The ‘Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education’ aims at raising billions of dollars to ensure that all girls go to school by 2015 in line with the United Nations’ millennium goals. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk