This week we are making you the portrait of Malala Yousafzai who represents the golden yellow of our CASA.
Malala, is a young Pakistani women's rights activist. Malala Yousafzai imagined herself a doctor or a pilot. Her first name, which means "stricken by grief", was given to her in homage to the famous Pashtun warrior and poet, Malalai from Maiwand, a village in southern Afghanistan. She grew up in Mingora, in Pakistan's Swat Valley. His father Ziauddin is not very present: an activist, he runs a chain of private schools and attends conferences to promote the education of Pakistan's children.
The young girl's life changed in July 2007, when the Taliban took control of the valley. Opponents are hanged, music and television banned, schools for girls destroyed.
It was there that a British journalist asked Malala's father if one of his students would agree to write a blog in Urdu on the BBC website under a pseudonym. A young volunteer withdraws, for fear of reprisals. MALALA, 11 YEARS OLD, TAKES OVER AND PUBLISHES, ON JANUARY 3, 2009, HER FIRST POST.
For several weeks, she talks about her class, which is gradually emptying out. – When the Taliban banned girls from going to school in mid-January, Malala wrote: “Five new schools were destroyed, including one very close to my house. I'm a little surprised. These schools are closed, why do they need to destroy them? Then: “It seems that it takes dozens of schools destroyed and hundreds of others closed for the army to think of protecting them.
If they had conducted their operations more correctly, we wouldn't be here. » A month later, girls in the valley are allowed to return to school if they wear the burqa. Malala is jubilant. But the Pakistani army is seeking to regain control of Swat. The family must leave Mingora, in a state of war.
Back in the valley the following summer, Malala gave interviews, displayed her desire to get into politics and cited as an example Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, who was assassinated in 2007. Her identity as a blogger was revealed, death threats are slipped under his door.
In the summer of 2012, during a public meeting, Taliban leaders decided to kill her. On October 9, when she was only 15, a gunman stopped the school bus taking her home and shot three times. A bullet passes through his head and lodges in his shoulder. Malala, in a coma, was transferred to a hospital in Peshawar, then to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, where she gradually recovered. The Pakistani Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack and said the girl "is the symbol of infidels and obscenity". He adds that if she survives, they will target her again.
The outrage is global. In 2012, the young girl appeared in TIME MAGAZINE 's list of personalities of the year. A text calling for him to be awarded the next Nobel Peace Prize collects thousands of signatures. In 2009, she was nominated for the foundation's International Children's Peace Prize. On December 19, 2011, she received the first National Youth Peace Prize from the Pakistani Government, from the hands of the Prime Minister. She then mentions the creation of a political party.
This distinction was subsequently renamed the “Malala Prize”. In December 2012, Malala Yousafzai received the Simone de Beauvoir prize for women's freedom. In September 2013, in Dublin, she received the most prestigious award from Amnesty International, the human rights organization.
One of Malala Yousafzai's most outstanding performances, the one that established her as an international icon, was undoubtedly her speech on July 12, 2013 in New York, before the UN YOUTH ASSEMBLY . The Taliban "thought that a bullet could silence us but they failed", she then launched over a calm, firm and enlightened speech.
"Let's take our notebooks and our pencils," she continued. These are our most powerful weapons.” And she had this formula imbued with a deep humanism: “I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all extremists and terrorists. Before concluding: “I don't even have any hatred for the Taliban who shot me. ". She received a standing ovation.
ON OCTOBER 10, 2014, THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE was finally co-awarded to her, which made her at 17 the youngest winner in the history of this prize.
The victory of her fight will only be complete when she can return safely to her own country. She doesn't have the luxury yet.
Sandra and Valentine