December 18, 2012
Pakistan’s interior minister has said that Malala Yousafzai will have to live under heavy security for the rest of her life. Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls education and will remain threatened as long as terrorists are in Pakistan.
December 18, 2012
Pakistan’s interior minister has said that Malala Yousafzai will have to live under heavy security for the rest of her life. Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls education and will remain threatened as long as terrorists are in Pakistan.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban because she refused to abandon her campaign for girls' education, will live under heavy security for the rest of her life, said Pakistan's interior minister.
The 15-year-old who was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin as she took a bus home from school is currently recovering in hospital in Britain.
Since the attack in October a campaign for her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize has gathered momentum.
Malala has said she wants to return to Pakistan but she will remain a target for as long as terrorism threatens the country, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told The Daily Telegraph in Delhi yesterday.
He also said the school she attended in Mingora, in the Taliban's former stronghold of Swat Valley, will continue to bear her name despite protests by some of the pupils who fear it may provoke more terrorist attacks.
An estimated 120 pupils boycotted their classes last week and tore up pictures of the teenage campaigner in protest at the decision to rename the Saidu Sharif Girls College as 'Government P.G Malala Yousufzai'. They set a three day deadline for the original name to be restored while some voiced resentment that they might face attack while Malala was safe in Britain.
"We want the government to remove the name plates and pictures and portraits of Malala immediately. Taliban have not spared Malala and they were out to destroy everything in her name, including our college," one pupil told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Malik said the decision to name the school after Malala would not be reversed and that the tribute was the very least Pakistan could do to honor her courage.
"When I visited her school I was the first one to propose that school in her name and I met the students there, the girls there, and they all clapped when I announced that. So I don't think this is an issue at all.
"The people of Mingora and Swat and Pakistan as a nation owe this much to her, so there will be no change of position and the school will continue to be in her name," he said.
Mr Malik said he was grateful to the British Government for arranging her treatment at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which specializes in treating wounded soldiers, and that doctors there would decide when she is well enough to return to Pakistan.
"She has expressed desire to come back and I'm sure she will come back and don't think that this kind of terror is going to continue for an indefinite period. You know the actions that we have taken already – the TTP [Pakistani Taliban] has now gone into splinter groups and that was part of our policy.
"I'm quite hopeful that whenever she gets better and she is in a position to move, talk to people, and of course can lead a normal life, she will have lifetime security in view of her courageous stand so I'm sure, inshallah [God Willing] she will come back to Pakistan," he said.
"Until terrorism is over, she will continue to have security until we feel she is OK. You never know the circumstances, what will happen. The Taliban might be zero tomorrow. Still [while] we think or successive government feels she needs security, it is of no issue, to be honest, because she has become the icon of Pakistan, she has stood against terrorists and Taliban and she has become an icon for the education of young girls," he added.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now the United National Special Envoy for Global Education, launched a petition in Malala's name calling for Pakistan to guarantee a school education for every girl and for every school age child to be in education by 2015.
Mr Malik was in India to launch a new visa regime between the two countries to encourage more trade.
Courtesy: Daily Telegraph
