| Malala Yousafzai ملاله یوسفزۍ |
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| Born | 1998 (age 14) | |||||
| Nationality | Pakistani | |||||
| Other names | Gul Makai | |||||
| Ethnicity | Pashtun | |||||
| Citizenship | Pakistan | |||||
| Known for | Women's rights activism, educationism | |||||
| Home town | Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan | |||||
| Political party | None | |||||
| Opponent(s) | Tehrik-i-Taliban | |||||
| Religion | Islam | |||||
| Parents | Ziauddin Yousafzai (father) | |||||
| Awards | International Children's Peace Prize (Runner-up, 2011) Pakistan's National Youth Peace Prize (2011 |
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On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus.She remains unconscious and in critical condition. A group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan have issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her.
Early life and activism
Yousafzai was born in 1998 and given the first name Malala, meaning "grief stricken" after alalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poetess and warrior woman. Her last name, Yousufzai, is that of a large Pashtun tribal confederation that is predominant in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where she grew up. At her house in Mingora, she lived with her two younger brothers, her parents, and two pet chickens.She affectionately referred to the region as "my Swat."Yousafzai was shaped in large part by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who is a poet, school owner and an educational activist himself, running a chain of schools known as the Khushal Public School, also named after a famous Pashtun poet, Khushal Khan Khattak.Once, after Yousafzai stated to an interviewer that she would like to become a doctor, her father encouraged her to become a politician instead.Ziauddin referred to his daughter as something entirely special, permitting her to stay up at night and talk about politics after her two brothers had been sent to bed.
BBC blogger
At the beginning of 2009, Yousafzai had a chance to write for BBC Urdu when her father, Ziauddin, was asked by Abdul Hai Kakkar, a BBC reporter out of Pakistan, if any female teachers at his school would write about life under the Taliban. At the time, Taliban militants led by Maulana Fazlullah were taking over the Swat Valley, banning TV, music, girls’ education,and women from going shopping.Bodies of beheaded policemen were hanging from town squares. Her father told the reporter that no teachers agreed, but rather that his daughter, in seventh-grade at the time, was interested in writing a diary. Editors at the BBC unanimously agreed. It is unclear whether Yousafzai or her father first came up with the idea.“We had been covering the violence and politics in Swat in detail but we didn’t know much about how ordinary people lived under the Taliban,” Mirza Waheed, the former editor of BBC Urdu, said. Because they were concerned about Yousafzai's safety, BBC editors insisted that she use a pseudonym. Her blog would be published under the byline "Gul Makai", meaning "corn flower" in Urdu.
On 3 January 2009, Yousafzai's first entry was posted to the BBC Urdu blog that would later make her famous. She would hand-write notes and then pass them on to a reporter who would scan and e-mail them. The blog captures Yousafzai's troubled psychological state during the First Battle of Swat, as military operations take place, fewer girls show up to school, and finally, her school shuts down.
| “ | I had a
terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I
have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat.
My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid
going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all
girls from attending schools.
Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased
because of Taleban's edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar,
Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict. 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 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. |
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—Malala Yousafzai, 3 January 2009 BBC blog entry
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The night before the ban took effect was filled with the noise of artillery fire, waking Yousafzai multiple times. The following morning, she woke up late, but afterwards her friend came over and they discussed homework as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That day, Yousafzai also read for the first time excerpts from her blog that had been published in a local newspaper. Her father, Ziauddin, recalled that someone had come up to him with the diary saying how wonderful it was, but he could only smile and not tell them it was actually written by his daughter.
Refugee
In May, the Pakistani Army moved into the region to regain control during the Second Battle of Swat. Mingora was evacuated and Yousafzai’s family was displaced and separated. Her father Ziauddin went to Peshawar to protest and lobby for support, while she was sent into the countryside to live with relatives. At the time, a New York Times reporter named Adam B. Ellick was filming a documentary about Yousafzai, which is where many details of her life have been captured. "I' really bored because I have no books to read" Yousalfzai is filmed saying in the documentary. Her mother was not allowed to be filmedThat month, after criticizing militants at a press conference, Yousafzai's father, Ziauddin, received a death threat over the radio by a Taliban commander.Obsessed by his mission to restore the Swat valley, her father also happened to forget Yousafzai's birthday, and with typical boldness, she ridiculed him in a text message and forced him to apologize, and to buy everyone a round of ice cream. But Yousafzai was deeply inspired in her activism by her father. That summer, for the first time, she committed to becoming a politician and not a doctor, as she had once aspired to be.
| “ | I have a new dream . . . I must be a politician to save this country. There are so many crises in our country. I want to remove these crises. | ” |
—Malala Yousafzai, Class Dismissed (documentary)
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Child activist
In 2009, Malala began to appear on television and publically advocate for female education,but it wasn't until October 2011 that she became a celebrity in Pakistan, when Desmond Tutu announced her nomination for the International Children's Peace Prize. It also seems to have been the first time that her BBC identity was revealed to the public. Her public profile rose even further when she was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize two months later in December.Yousafzai's growing recognition put her on the Taliban's radar. On Facebook, where she was an active user, she began to receive threats and fake profiles were created under her name. Yousafzai deleted her personal page and attended digital-security sessions, but vowed to “never stop working for education for girls".
| “ | I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right. | ” |
—Malala Yousafzai, envisioning a confrontation with the Taliban
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Awards and recognition
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- The Dutch international children's advocacy group KidsRights Foundation included Yousafzai as one of five nominees worldwide for the prize, after Desmond Tutu nominated her in October 2011. She was the first Pakistani girl ever nominated for the award. The announcement said "Malala dared to stand up for herself and other girls and used national and international media to let the world know girls should also have the right to go to school".She was the runner-up.
- 19 December 2011, Pakistan's National Youth Peace Prize.
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- Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani awarded Yousafzai with Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize for those under 18 years old — subsequently renamed the National Malala Peace Prize.Speaking to the media after attending the proceedings, Yousafzai expressed her wish to form her own political party comprising people working for the cause of education, saying “my party will operate in all four provinces.” On Yousafzai’s request, the prime minister directed the authorities to set up an IT campus in the Swat Degree College for Women.
- 3 January 2012, Malala Yousafzai Government Girls Secondary School.
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- The Government Girls Secondary School on Mission Road, Swat, was renamed in her honor.
Assassination attempt
On 9 October 2012, a Taliban gunman shot Yousafzai as she rode home on a bus after taking an exam in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The masked gunman shouted "Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all,"and, on her being identified, shot her twice, once in the head and once in the neck. Two other girls were also wounded in the shooting: Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan,both of whom were stable enough to speak to reporters and provide details of the attack.After the shooting, Yousafzai was airlifted to a military hospital in Peshawar, where doctors were forced to begin operating after swelling developed in the left portion of her brain, which had been damaged by the bullet when it passed through her head.After a three-hour operation, doctors successfully removed the bullet that had lodged in her shoulder near her spinal cord.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Yousafzai "is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity," adding that if she survived, they would target her again.Taliban leaders had decided a few months earlier to kill her, and assigned gunmen to carry it out.
Medical treatment
On 10 October 2012, Yousafzai was still being treated in the intensive care unit of the military hospital in Peshawar, where doctors later performed a decompressive craniectomy, in which part of the skull is removed to allow room for the brain to swell. Before the surgery, Yousafzai was moving her hands and feet, which suggests there was no paralysis, and she verbally responded to a teacher immediately after the shooting.A plane was being held on standby at nearby Bacha Khan International Airport to move her out of Pakistan for further treatment if necessary.The Pakistani government offered to pay for all medical costs that she incurred.On 11 October 2012, a panel of Pakistani and British doctors made the decision to move Yousafzai to the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology in Rawalpindi rather than a medical center abroad.A medical team treating her at the hospital reported, "neurologically she has significantly improved... coming days... are very critical". Mumtaz Khan, a doctor, said that she had a 70% chance of survival. "Her condition is not yet out of danger despite improvement," Masood Kausar, the governor of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, reported.
On 12 October 2012, Yousafzai was still unconscious and on a ventilator in the critical care unit of the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology in Rawalpindi. According to her uncle, Faiz Muhammad, she had not been conscious or responsive since the surgery to remove the bullet.Yousafzai's vital organs were intact and functioning normally, but according to a second CT scan, there was still slight swelling in her brain. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that Yousafzai will be shifted to Germany, where she could receive the best medical treatment, as soon as she is stable enough to travel. A team of doctors will travel with her, and the president will personally bear the expenditures of her treatment.
Public reaction
The assassination attempt received immediate worldwide media coverage and produced an outpouring of sympathy, along with widespread anger. Protests against the shooting were held in several Pakistani cities the day after the attack. Pakistani officials offered a $105,000 (10m rupee) reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers. Responding to concerns about his safety, Yousafzai's father, Ziaddun, said "We wouldn't leave our country if my daughter survives or not. We have an ideology that advocates peace. The Taliban cannot stop all independent voices through the force of bullets."World leaders unanimously denounced the attack. United States President Barack Obama found the news of the shooting "reprehensible, disgusting and tragic".Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at a gathering of the American Girl Scouts movement, said Yousafzai had been "very brave in standing up for the rights of girls" and that the attackers had been "threatened by that kind of empowerment".United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called it a "heinous and cowardly act".
| “ | Every girl in Swat is Malala. We will educate ourselves. We will win. They can't defeat us. | ” |
Classmate of Yousafzai, ARY Digital
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On 12 October 2012, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against the Taliban gunmen who tried to kill Yousafzai. Islamic scholars from the Sunni Ittehad Council publicly denounced attempts by the Pakistani Taliban to mount religious justifications for the shooting of Yousafzai and two of her classmates.
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