女児出産の母親殺し。夫とその母親が共謀か？ アフガ二スタン
男尊女卑のイスラム教文化が起こす悲劇。
Police: Afghan Mom Killed for Having Girl
By AP / AMIR SHAH and HEIDI VOGT Monday, Jan. 30, 2012
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — An Afghan woman has been strangled death, apparently by her husband, who was upset that she gave birth to a second daughter rather than the son he had hoped for, police said Monday.
It was the latest in a series of grisly examples of subjugation of women that have made headlines in Afghanistan in the past few months — including a 15-year-old tortured and forced into prostitution by in-laws and a female rape victim who was imprisoned for adultery.
The episodes have raised the question of what will happen to the push for women's rights in Afghanistan as the international presence here shrinks along with the military drawdown. NATO forces are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2014.
In the 10 years since the ouster of the Taliban, great strides have been made for women in Afghanistan, with many attending school, working in offices and even sometimes marching in protests. But abuse and repression of women are still common, particularly in rural areas where women are still unlikely to set foot outside of the house without a burqa robe that covers them from head to toe.
PHOTOS: Afghanistan's Dangerous Korengal Valley
The man in the latest case, Sher Mohammad, fled the Khanabad district in Kunduz province last week, about the time a neighbor found his 22-year-old wife dead in their house, said District Police Chief Sufi Habibullah. Medical examiners whom police brought to check the body said she had been strangled, Habibullah said.
The woman, named Estorai, had warned family members that her husband had repeatedly reproached her for giving birth to a daughter rather than a son and had threatened to kill her if it happened again, said Provincial women's affairs chief Nadira Ghya, who traveled to Khanabad to deal with the case. Estorai gave birth to her second daughter between two and three months ago, Ghya said. Officials did not have a family name for either Sher Mohammad or Estorai.
Police took the man's mother into custody because she appears to have collaborated in a plot to kill her daughter-in-law, Habibullah said. Ghya, who visited the man's mother in jail, said that she swears that Estorai committed suicide by hanging. Police said they found no rope and no evidence of hanging from the woman's wounds.
Boy babies are traditionally prized much more highly than girls in Afghanistan, where a son means a breadwinner and a daughter is seen as a drain on the family until she is married off. Even so, a murder over the gender of a baby would be rare and shocking if proved true.
The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Monday praising the Afghan government for recent declarations supporting women's rights in the wake of the latest abuse cases that have garnered media attention.
"The rights of women cannot be relegated to the margins of international affairs, as this issue is at the core of our national security and the security of people everywhere," the statement said. It did not address the killing of the young woman in Kunduz.
男尊女卑、女性虐待が問題化するイスラム教国家のアフガニスタン
Tortured Afghan teen on attackers: 'The same should be done to them'
By Nick Paton Walsh and Ashley Fantz, CNN
updated 8:40 AM EDT, Wed May 9, 2012
Editor's note: CNN does not usually reveal the identities of women and girls who allege they have been raped, but this young woman wanted to be seen and tell her story.
(CNN) -- Last year, people around the world were outraged when they heard the story of Sahar Gul.
The Afghan teen was married off at 13. She said her husband, a member of the Afghan Army, raped her. Enraged because she didn't immediately get pregnant, her in-laws locked her in a basement for months, torturing her with hot pokers and ripping out her nails. Ultimately, she said, they wanted to force her into prostitution as punishment for failing her obligation as a woman.
"They told me to go to the basement because there were some guests coming to the house," she told CNN. "When I went there they came in and tied my hands and feet and pulled me upwards from above. They brought very little food for me.
"While going to the bathroom they used to beat me a lot. I was crying all this time," she said. "When they put electric shocks on my feet, I felt like I was going to die at that moment. I screamed and that's how our neighbors realized there was something happening. For one day and night I was unconscious, feeling dead."
Neighbors heard her cries and called authorities, who rescued the teenager in December.
Last weekend, Gul, now 14, trembled as she stood in court and listened to a Kabul judge hand down sentences to three of her attackers.
They each got 10 years. Her husband is still being sought.
"Ten years is not enough. They should have been given 50 years," the teenager told CNN journalists, who visited her recently in an Afghanistan safe house where more than a dozen other women are being counseled after experiencing horrific treatment.
"They should be punished in the prison. They hurt my eyes and pulled out my nail and hair, and the same should be done to them. whatever they did to me, the same should be done to them," she said.
Gul has become an international symbol of the struggle for women's rights in Afghanistan. The outcome of the case against her relatives has inevitably posed a larger question.
More than a decade since Western forces invaded Afghanistan, have there been enough real and meaningful advances in women's rights there?
If so, will that progress erode after the United States pulls out of the country in 2014 or be diminished while the United States continues to pursue a negotiated peace with the Taliban?
Under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women were banned from classrooms, politics or employment. Women who wanted to leave home had to be escorted by a male relative and were forced to wear burqas. Those who disobeyed were publicly beaten. In some parts of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, locals were encouraged to blacken the windows on their homes so women inside could not be seen.
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Rights groups have cited advances since then. In 2004, girls were formally guaranteed a right to an education under the Afghan constitution.
Human Rights Watch reports that nearly 2 million Afghan girls are enrolled in school (though only a small number advance past elementary school, rights groups have reported).
Literacy rates are up for girls between 12 and 16, according to a 2011 Oxfam report.
Across Afghanistan, infant mortality rates have dropped and life expectancy has risen, according to Unicef.
Women who once had to quit their jobs have gone back to work as doctors, lawyers and police officers, Oxfam said.
But stories of honor killings, poisoned wells at girls schools and disfigurements persist.
President Hamid Karzai enacted the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law, intended to help reduce violence against women committed through practices deemed traditional, such as so-called honor killings.
But the United Nations reported in June 2011 that the violence against women law was being enforced in only 10 of 34 provinces.
Also, from March 2010 to a year later, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission registered 2,299 cases of violence against women that, according to the law, would be considered crimes.
Gul said she not only has to think about the trauma she's endured, but also she is still technically married to her attacker, and she fears it may not be safe to carry on living in Afghanistan.
"I think the punishment given by the court to these people worries me. The government is trying its best to find [my husband, convicted but on the run]," she said. "But if tomorrow he finds me, it's possible he could kill me.
"I want to go abroad," she continued. "If I sit here, they will find me. I want to go to school and study, to become a doctor or a prosecutor, so I can give punishment by myself to these sort of people. "
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女性は所有物 - 女性虐待とイスラム教国の実態。
32 Years Later, Pakistani Woman Gets Nose
By AP / ASIF SHAHZAD Saturday, June 02, 2012
(THATHA PIRA, Pakistan) — After six years of abuse, Allah Rakhi was walking out of her marriage when her husband struck again. Snatching a knife, he sliced off her nose. "You're no longer beautiful!" he shouted.
He then slashed at her foot — brutal punishment for leaving the house without his permission.
"A woman is only a woman inside the home, outside she's a whore!" he yelled at Rakhi as she lay bleeding on the dusty street just outside her home.
That was 32 years ago.
All that time, Rakhi hid her disfigured face under a veil. Then in March, a surgeon took up her case. He cut flesh from her ribs and fashioned it into a new nose, transforming her life.
While the details of every case of violence against Pakistani woman differ, many are based on a concept of "family honor." Women can be targeted for suspicion of an affair, wishing to divorce or dressing inappropriately. Hundreds women are murdered each year because of mere suspicions.
The nose is considered the symbol of family honor in Pakistan — explaining why a woman's nose is often the target of spousal abuse. A popular plea from parents to children is "Please take care of our nose," which means, "don't do anything that tarnishes the reputation of the family."
Rooted in tribal ideas that a woman's chastity is the property of the man, honor killings are practiced in much of the Arab world and South Asia. They have also been carried out by immigrants from those regions to the West.
Pakistani courts have a history of letting off offenders or giving them only light punishment, assuming the cases get to trial at all.
Rakhi's husband, for example, served just 10 months in jail before being released in exchange for a commitment to pay her medical bills. He never did.
Accurate statistics on the extent of honor crimes are hard to come by, because many cases go unreported or are settled out of court under pressure from the families of the victim and the attacker.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that in 2011, at least 943 women were murdered, nine had their noses cut off, 98 were tortured, 47 set on fire and 38 attacked with acid.
Efforts to introduce stronger laws to increase punishments for violence against women have been blocked by an Islamist political party which publicly supports the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. The party, Jamiat Ulema Islam, is a member of the ruling coalition.
The lower houses of parliament passed the bill, but the JUI is preventing its passage through the upper house.
"We will never let it happen," said JUI senator Maulana Ghafoor Haideri, who said the bill was an attempt to "Westernize" Pakistan. "It will ruin our family institutions," he said.
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Shad Begum, a Pakistani right activists who received the U.S. International Woman of Courage award from first lady Michelle Obama this year, said firmer laws and better enforcement are the only solution to violence against woman.
"Our leaders need to take a firm stand," she said. "If a man makes a woman a victim, or makes an 'example out of her' as he believes, our courts should also make an example out of him."
Rakhi was attacked when she was 19, after being married at 13. Despite being illegal, child marriages remain common in parts of Pakistan.
Following the attack, she worked to support herself and her daughter, painting flowers on pots in a factory and buying and selling clothes in markets across the country, all the time hidden behind a veil.
"I died every moment," Rakhi said in her three-room mud and brick house in a village hidden among the wheat fields of Pakistan's Punjab province.
Rakhi's husband divorced her soon after he was released from prison, she said.
In a bizarre twist, the 51-year-old woman now lives again under the same roof as him — something she claims as a "victory," but also perhaps points to her poverty and lack of alternatives.
Rakhi's son persuaded her to return home, anxious for her to have a more comfortable life.
On a recent visit, the husband scooted out of the house as Rakhi welcomed a reporter, and he did not made himself available for comment.
She said she never stopped hoping for a new nose, but doctors were unwilling to operate because she suffers from hepatitis C, a liver condition that can complicate surgery.
It was her daughter who gave her the chance. She was working in the capital, Islamabad, at an institute that provides training for woman recovering from having acid thrown on their faces. She introduced Rakhi to the Acid Survivors Foundation, which put her in touch with a surgeon.
Dr. Hamid Hasan took her case for free. Asked why he would take the chance, he answered, "Her pleas. Her tears."
At a follow up appointment last month, Hasan touched the scars where the stitches once were on her nose and forehead.
Rakhi winced slightly, and smiled as the surgeon took his hands away.
Hasan said her positive attitude was important for the other operations she must undergo in the coming months.
"Thank God I did not commit suicide," Rakhi said. "Life is a blessing!"
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Poll: 52% of Jewish Israelis say illegal African migrants a 'cancer'
June 8, 2012 | 9:05 am 55
More than half of Jewish Israelis polled in May agreed that Africans living illegally in Israel are “a cancer in the body” of the country, backing the controversial words of an Israeli lawmaker.
The new poll from the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University is a sign of how deep the backlash against African migrants goes in Israel, a country founded by refugees that has seen angry and sometimes violent resistance to the new influx from Eritrea, Sudan and elsewhere in Africa.
The Times’ Edmund Sanders has recently reported on a string of attacks and harassment against migrants such as 60-year-old Berhun Gergrehra, a former Eritrean soldier:
Leaning against the charred remains of his fence, Gergrehra said the recent attack was the second time his house had been firebombed in a year.
"We're thinking about leaving," he said. "This country just won't accept us."
Though the attacks spurred outcry against racism and xenophobia in Israel, the new poll showed strong support for the recent Tel Aviv protests against African immigrants, with more than four out of five Jewish Israelis saying they backed the demonstrations.
Perhaps even more strikingly, more than a third said they could identify with the violence that followed, as angry mobs smashed store windows and attacked a car carrying Africans. The researchers called the number surprisingly high, "considering that most people do not tend to openly report sympathy for acts that are broadly condemned by society." More religious Israelis were more likely to sympathize.
Six hundred Israelis were polled, including Arab Israelis, who were much less likely to object to the African immigrants. Only 19% of Arab Israelis agreed that African illegal immigrants were a "cancer" and only 25% backed the Tel Aviv protests against them.
Other findings from the new poll included:
- Though disdain for refugees might seem to result from daily friction with foreigners, most of the Jewish Israelis who were polled said there were few refugees where they lived or none at all.
- While more than half of Jewish Israelis were tolerant of foreign workers from Eastern Europe, Thailand or the Philippines, nearly three out of four said they were disturbed by Sudanese or Eritrean workers.
- Among both Jewish and Arab Israelis, strong majorities oppose the idea of an open-door policy toward refugees who were persecuted in their countries of origin.
アメリカとパキスタンの関係悪化の意味するもの
US, Pakistan beginning to look more like enemies
Jun 9, 1:18 PM EDT
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT and REBECCA SANTANA
Associated Press
ISLAMABAD (AP) -- You know a friendship has gone sour when you start making mean jokes about your friend in front of his most bitter nemesis.
So it was a bad sign this week when the U.S. defense secretary joshed in front of an audience of Indians about how Washington kept Pakistan in the dark about the raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a year ago.
"They didn't know about our operation. That was the whole idea," Leon Panetta said with a chuckle at a Q&A session after a speech in New Delhi, raising laughs from the audience. The Bin Laden raid by U.S. commandos in a Pakistani town infuriated Islamabad because it had no advance notice, and it was seen by Pakistan's powerful military as a humiliation.
The U.S. and Pakistan are starting to look more like enemies than allies, threatening the U.S. fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants based in the country and efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan before American troops withdraw.
Long plagued by frustration and mistrust, the relationship has plunged to its lowest level since the 9/11 attacks forced the countries into a tight but awkward embrace over a decade ago. The U.S. has lost its patience with Pakistan and taken the gloves off to make its anger clear.
"It has taken on attributes and characteristics now of a near adversarial relationship, even though neither side wants it to be that way," said Maleeha Lodhi, who was serving as Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and was key in hurriedly putting together the two countries' alliance.
The latest irritant is Pakistan's refusal to end its six-month blockade of NATO troop supplies meant for Afghanistan. Even if that issue is resolved, however, the relationship may be on an irreversible downward slide. The main source of U.S. anger is Pakistan's unwillingness to go after militants using its territory to launch attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.
On the Pakistani side, officials are fed up with Washington's constant demands for more without addressing Islamabad's concerns or sufficiently appreciating the country's sacrifice. Pakistan has lost thousands of troops fighting a domestic Taliban insurgency fueled partly by resentment of the alliance with the U.S.
Panetta's comments about the bin Laden raid may have been unscripted, but others he made while in India and Afghanistan seemed calculated to step up pressure on Pakistan. He stressed Washington's strong relationship with India - which Islamabad considers its main, historic enemy - and defended unpopular American drone attacks in Pakistan.
He also said in unusually sharp terms that the U.S. was running out of patience with Islamabad's failure to go after the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, considered the most dangerous militant group fighting in Afghanistan.
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Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target the Haqqanis and other Afghan militants based on its soil because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, especially in countering the influence of India.
Pakistan lashed out at Panetta on Saturday and denied the country was providing safe havens for militants.
Panetta "is oversimplifying some of the very complex issues we are dealing with in our efforts against extremism and terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said. "We strongly believe that such statements are misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region."
A senior U.S. official described the relationship as "the worst it has ever been."
"This is from Washington's point of view and from Pakistan's point of view, and even among the real well-wishers on both sides who are appalled and befuddled that we can't get past all of this and move beyond," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
After years of frosty relations caused by Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Washington and Islamabad were thrust together on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida attacked New York and Washington. The U.S. demanded Pakistan support the war against bin Laden and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan and sought to convince Islamabad it was not simply interested in a "transactional" relationship based on counterterrorism cooperation, but wanted a long-term strategic partnership.
U.S. officials have largely abandoned that argument over the past 18 months as the relationship has suffered repeated crises.
"Because of the toxic atmosphere on both sides, the two countries cannot even work in a transactional way," said Lodhi, the former Pakistani ambassador.
In January 2011, a CIA contractor sparked outrage when he shot to death two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore who he claimed were trying to rob him. Anger over the incident was still simmering when the U.S. killed bin Laden in May.
In November, American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at two Afghan border posts. The U.S. has said it was an accident, but the Pakistani army claims it was deliberate.
Pakistan retaliated by kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones and closing its border to NATO supplies meant for troops in Afghanistan. Negotiations to reopen the route have been hampered by Islamabad's demand for much higher transit fees and Washington's refusal to apologize for the deaths of the Pakistani troops.
The U.S. has attempted to bridge the difference over money by offering to repave highways used by the supply trucks, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
But Pakistani officials have made clear the route will not reopen without some kind of apology. The U.S. has expressed its regret over the incident but has refused to apologize for fear it could open the Obama administration up to criticism by Republicans upset with Pakistan.
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A senior U.S. defense official, Peter Lavoy, arrived in Pakistan on Friday to participate in the negotiations. But Panetta's comments could complicate matters.
Such statements do "water down the willingness to cooperate with the United States," said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
President Barack Obama showed U.S. anger over the supply issue at a NATO summit last month in Chicago by refusing a one-on-one meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
However, the U.S. and Pakistan both have reasons to walk the relationship back from the brink.
The U.S. continues to receive some intelligence cooperation from Pakistan on militants and has been able to continue drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal region despite public protests, likely because of tacit agreement by Pakistani military leaders. Both could be threatened if the relationship heads farther south.
Just as important is Pakistan's support on the Afghan war. Pakistan is seen as key to striking a peace deal with the Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan that will allow the U.S. to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014 without the country descending into further chaos.
Pakistan is keen on freeing up over a billion dollars in frozen U.S. aid, which will only be released if it reopens the supply line. Also, Pakistan can ill afford to become a true enemy of the U.S. at a time when it is struggling to contain its own Taliban insurgency and right its stuttering economy.
But politics on both sides make breaking the impasse difficult, particularly with U.S. elections this fall and Pakistani elections due early next year - possibly even sooner.
Historically, Pakistan's army has steered the relationship with the U.S. But fearing public backlash in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant, the generals have tossed the NATO supply line issue to Pakistan's weak and unpopular civilian government. The politicians are reluctant to do anything that could hurt their election prospects.
"The longer Islamabad delays and dithers, the opinion in Washington is hardening," said Lodhi. "Time is the enemy of a reset in relations."
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AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan Kathy Gannon contributed to this report.
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アメリカの外国人留学生の数
Education the World
Top 10 countries sending new students to study in the US., 2010-11
Country / New Students in US / One-year Change
1.China 157,558 23.3%
2.India 103,895 -1.0%
3.South korea 73,351% 1.7%
4.Canada 27,546 -2.1%
5.Taiwan 24,818 -7.0%
6. Saudi Arabia 22,704 43.6%
7. Japan 21,290 -14.3%
8. Vietnam 14,888 13.5%
9. Mexica 13,713 2.0%
10. Turkey 12,184 -1.7%
Source Institute of International Education
The Wall Street Journal
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Saudi Students Flood In as U.S. Reopens Door
July 27, 2012, 10:32 p.m. ET
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—Dressed in caps and gowns, the college students packing a graduation ceremony in suburban Washington, D.C., acted like excited graduates anywhere in the United States.
Except, perhaps, when the men broke into tribal line dances. Or when the women, wearing headscarves, burst forth with zagareet, soaring trills of their tongues, in celebration.
The more than 300 graduates gathered at a hotel overlooking the Potomac River were all from Saudi Arabia, part of a massive government-paid foreign study program to earn bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees and return home to help run their country.
"You are the best of the best, and the future of our country," Saudi Arabia's cultural attaché, Mohammed al Issa, declared at the May event.
In the years following the security crackdown on Arab travelers after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks—in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian—tough restrictions kept most Arab students away from the U.S. In 2004, only about 1,000 Saudis were studying in the U.S., according to the U.S. State Department.
This past school year, Saudi Arabia sent 66,000 students to U.S. universities, four times the number before the 2001 attacks and the fastest-growing source of foreign students in the U.S., ahead of China, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Saudi influx is part of a broader increase in international students in the U.S. as American universities seek to raise tuition revenues. Some 723,277 foreign students enrolled during the 2010-2011 school year, up 32% from a decade ago.
Graduates tossed their caps into the air for a camera crew filming a piece for a Saudi Arabian news channel after the May 26 ceremony.
"With the financial crunch…the [U.S.] administrators look to the international students to a degree as saviors," said Michael Launius, vice president of international students at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., where Saudi enrollment has jumped from nothing in 2005 to about 150 this past school year.
To accommodate the new Saudi students, Central Washington administrators offered to provide halal food prepared in accordance with Islamic law, or set aside space on campus for a mosque. The Saudi students declined, preferring to eat at town cafes like everyone else, Mr. Launius said.
The Saudi contingent "doesn't seem to have caused any kind of consternation and stir at all," said Mr. Launius. "I think this is a good exposure to what these folks are actually like."
Saudi Arabia's international scholarship program, launched when Saudi King Abdullah took the throne in 2005, is a key part of his efforts to equip future generations in handling the country's main challenges, including a fast-growing population and declining oil reserves.
Since taking over, the Saudi king has emphasized scientific education and exposure to foreign countries as keys to combat religious extremism and transform Saudi Arabia into a modern state. This year, the scholarship program has about 130,000 young people studying around the world, at an estimated cost of at least $5 billion since the program began.
The king's efforts to modernize, including the scholarship program, have led to constant tension between Western-influenced Saudis and a religiously educated core who hold heavy sway over society and reject modernization because it is associated with the West.
That internal tension was on display this month when Saudi Arabia, under threat of a ban from the Olympic Games, finally ended its status as the last Olympic nation to refuse to include women on its teams.
In the coming years, the Saudi monarchy will likely face mounting pressure to modernize economically and politically as the country spends down its oil wealth. The next Saudi kings will need an educated middle class, economists say, if the kingdom is to build a productive private sector and create jobs for millions of young Saudis.
The foreign scholarship program can create challenges for some students, particularly women, when they try to reintegrate into Saudi society after experiencing much more freedom abroad, some foreign students say. Unlike many international students who study in the U.S., most Saudis return to their home country after receiving their degrees, said James B. Smith, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia since 2009.
King Abdullah, who is in his late 80s and was educated by clerics in a mosque, initiated the scholarship program after persuading U.S. officials, particularly President George W. Bush, to reopen the student visa service after 9/11. At a pivotal meeting in 2005 at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, the King convinced Mr. Bush that the education program was crucial for the two countries' long-term relationship.
"The impassioned plea that the King made for this, and the long-term importance of the relationship, really made an impression on President Bush," said Frances Townsend, former homeland security adviser, who attended the 2005 meeting.
As late as the 1950s, Saudi Arabia had a literacy rate below 5%. Today, the percentage of literate Saudis has reached 79%, according to the CIA World Factbook. One-third have university degrees, the World Bank says.
Even so, religious conservatives have a lingering influence over curriculum. Critics say Saudi schooling is long on theology and short on science and math. The kingdom ranked 93rd out of 129 countries in UNESCO'S 2008 quality of education index.
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In the past, only upper class Saudis were educated abroad. The king's scholarship program, by contrast, reaches out to promising young people in all levels of society, says Ahmed al Omran, a Saudi journalist who earned a master's from Columbia University.
At the graduation ceremony in Washington in May, Saudi degree recipients ranged from second-generation U.S. graduates, to the first in their families to read and write.
To be eligible for the program, students must have top grades and generally study in a field targeted by the government—such as business, engineering or medicine. Females are required to be accompanied by a close male relative. The government urges students to avoid political activity and media attention, students say.
In the U.S., closer Saudi ties still generate controversy. While public criticism of Saudi Arabia has generally been muted since 2005, some U.S. critics still focus on what they say are inadequately addressed questions about a possible Saudi government role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Others say the U.S. should have less to do with an ally accused by rights groups of mistreatment of religious minorities, dissidents and others.
U.S. officials have arrested one Saudi college student on terrorism-related charges since the 2001 plots. Last month, Khalid Al Dawsari, a student on private scholarship to Texas Tech University in 2008, was convicted in federal court in Texas on charges alleging he plotted to bomb Mr. Bush's Dallas home and other targets. He wasn't part of King Abdullah's current government scholarship program.
After Mr. Al Dawsari's arrest last year, Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, called for closer monitoring of Saudi students. "We have to be much, much stricter, much more realistic…when they come from countries such as Saudi Arabia," Mr. King told Fox News. Mr. King's office didn't respond to requests for comment.
Some of Saudi Arabia's harsher critics have supported the scholarship program. "If anybody is going to modernize [Saudi] society, it's going to be people" with exposure to the West, said Elliott Abrams, a conservative policy analyst who served in two Republican administrations. "In that sense I'm all in favor of it."
The long-term impact on Saudi society of so many students being educated abroad remains to be seen. At a coffee shop in the hotel where the graduation ceremony was held in Washington, the recent graduates spoke of eagerness to get back to Saudi Arabia as well as a wistfulness at leaving the U.S.
"The best four years I ever had," graduate Dana Al Mojil said of her study at Portland State University. Ms. Al Mojil was rueful about turning over the keys to her Pontiac to her younger sister and other relatives, who are still studying here. In Saudi Arabia, women aren't permitted to drive.
She will also miss the independence and responsibility she discovered in America. "I pay bills myself. I shop myself," Ms. Al Mojil said. "In Saudi, you don't do that."
Munir Zaimy, a 26-year-old with a new master's degree from Southern Methodist University, said he would return home with new ideas about education, business and other fields. When "we go back, we want things to be better," he said. "Not American, not Saudi—better."
Back in Riyadh, many students who have returned express satisfaction at settling back in with families and jobs and repaying their country with hard work. For others, especially some women, a foreign education is more complicated.
Deema al Mashabi, 24, is weighing whether to accept an offer of a king's scholarship for a master's degree in the U.S. Her mother has asked her to refuse. "She feels that I would like it so much if I do go abroad…that I would never come back," Ms. Al Mashabi says.
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Her mother also worries that Saudi men may be reluctant to marry not only Ms. Al Mashabi but her sisters if Ms. Al Mashabi brings Western ways back to the family. Ms. Al Mashabi says that many of her female friends who were scholarship students return home only to move back abroad, to Dubai or elsewhere. Many who come back to stay are unhappy, she said.
In the Saudi kingdom, more than 40% of young Saudi women job-seekers are unemployed because custom and religious code limit where they can work.
Indeed, conservative Saudi clerics have targeted the kingdom's scholarship program, saying it is detaching young Saudi men and women from their religious mooring. "The scholarships dragged woe onto our nation," Sheik Nasser al-Omar told Saudi Arabia's al Sharq newspaper in May.
Elite members of Saudi society have long placed faith in U.S. universities. There are more members of King Abdullah's cabinet holding U.S. doctorates—at least seven—than in President Obama's, which includes two, not counting honorary doctorates. Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al Saud, brought closer in the line of succession by the June death of brother Prince Nayef, could one day become the first U.S.-educated Saudi king, thanks to his bachelor's degree from Redlands College in Redlands, Calif. in the 1960s.
Saudi students have been linked to U.S. universities since the first days of the kingdom. Standard Oil of California—based near the University of Southern California in Los Angeles—signed the first major oil deal with King Abdullah's father, in the 1930s. After that, many upper class Saudis sent their sons and a few daughters to USC.
"That first wave going to the U.S.—they had tremendous impact on the way this country developed," said Abdul Rahman al Zamil, a Saudi businessman and former deputy commerce minister who was one of six brothers to become a USC alum.
But the open door for Saudi students slammed shut in 2001.
"You can't imagine how they treated you," said Sami al Obeid, a Saudi businessman who attended the University of Oregon in 2005-2006. Mr. al Obeid said his U.S. visa was revoked mid-school year, without explanation, and he never finished his U.S. degree.
U.S. universities said they lost about $40 million a year in tuition from Middle Eastern students after 9/11.
After the 2005 meeting between King Abdullah and Mr. Bush, the U.S. government cleared a six-month backlog of Saudi visa applications, said Ms. Townsend, the former homeland security adviser. The visa application process was overhauled to be more efficient.
Behind the scenes, security was tightened. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia's domestic intelligence agency intensified cooperation and screening of visa applicants, Ms. Townsend said. Diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks show U.S. and Saudi officials discussing increased monitoring of Saudi students in the U.S., and follow-up interviews by Saudi intelligence of Saudi students while home on school holidays.
On the U.S. political front, top State Department officials briefed members of Congress privately, detailing security measures, Ms. Townsend said. Supporters hoped to head off any scenario in which a member of Congress would "stand up and begin to lambaste the Saudis publicly," she said.
The heightened security for the students has yielded rewards. Both U.S. and Saudi experts credit Saudi counterterror officials under Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a U.S. university alum, with alerting Americans to two Al-Qaeda-linked bomb plots since 2010. Cooperation on the student applications helped bring Saudi and U.S. intelligence agencies to a "level of transparency as good as it is with Britain," Ms. Townsend said.
A version of this article appeared July 27, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Saudi Students Flood In As U.S. Reopens Door.
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宗教が人類の平和・進歩を拒むよい例だろう。こんな狂信的差別社会パキスタンが核爆弾を保有している事実に驚愕するのは凡人だけだろうか。
***
Imam arrested in Pakistan blasphemy case, stirring tensions
By Michael Georgy
ISLAMABAD | Sun Sep 2, 2012 9:06am EDT
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Christian girl who was arrested under Pakistan's controversial anti-blasphemy law may have moved a step closer to freedom on Sunday after police detained a Muslim cleric on suspicion of planting evidence to frame her.
Still, Rimsha Masih, whose arrest last month angered religious and secular groups worldwide, may be in danger if she returns from jail to her village.
Some Muslim neighbors insist she should still be punished, and said the detained imam was a victim.
Under Muslim Pakistan's anti-blasphemy law, the mere allegation of causing offence to Islam can mean death. Those accused are sometimes killed by members of the public even if they are found innocent by the courts.
"Pour petrol and burn these Christians," said Iqbal Bibi, 74, defending the imam on the steps of the mosque where he preaches in Masih's impoverished village of Mehr Jaffer.
"The cleric of the mosque has been oppressed. He is not at fault. He is innocent."
Masih was accused by Muslim neighbors of burning Islamic religious texts and arrested, but on Sunday police official Munir Hussain Jafri said a cleric had been taken into custody after witnesses reported he had torn pages from a Koran and planted them in Masih's bag beside burned papers.
The imam, Khalid Jadoon Chishti, appeared briefly in court on Sunday before he was sent to jail for a 14-day judicial remand.
A bail hearing will be held on Monday for Masih, whose case has re-focused a spotlight on Pakistan's anti-blasphemy law, under which anyone who speaks ill of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad commits a crime punishable by death.
Activists and human rights groups say vague terminology has led to its misuse, and that the law dangerously discriminates against the country's tiny minority groups.
Critics of Pakistan's leaders say they are too worried about an extremist backlash to speak out against the law in a nation where religious conservatism is increasingly prevalent.
In January 2011, the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own bodyguard because the governor had called for reform of the anti-blasphemy law.
Two months after Taseer's murder, Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian, was killed by the Taliban for demanding changes to the law.
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Convictions are common, although the death sentence has never been carried out. Most convictions are thrown out on appeal, but mobs have killed many people accused of blasphemy.
Masih's case has raised a high level of concern because of her age and media reports that she suffers from Down's Syndrome.
Some reports have said she is 11. A hospital said in a report she was about 14 but had the mental capacities of someone younger, and was uneducated.
Christians, who make up four percent of Pakistan's population of 180 million, have been especially concerned about the blasphemy law, saying it offers them no protection.
Convictions hinge on witness testimony and are often linked to vendettas, they complain.
In 2009, 40 houses and a church were set ablaze by a mob of 1,000 Muslims in the town of Gojra, in Punjab province. At least seven Christians were burned to death. The attacks were triggered by reports of the desecration of the Koran.
Two Christian brothers accused of writing a blasphemous letter against the Prophet Mohammad were gunned down outside a court in the eastern city of Faisalabad in July of 2010.
Masih's arrest triggered an exodus of several hundred Christians from her village after mosques reported over their loudspeakers what the girl was alleged to have done.
In the village, many Christian homes -- crude cement structures along crowded, dusty alleys -- are still padlocked.
A few Christians have returned but are reluctant to discuss Masih's case, saying it was up to the courts.
"We are poor people. What can we do?" said one, Mahmood Masih, adding that he was not scared of his Muslim neighbors.
Muslims in the village, where mangy dogs sniffed through piles of garbage near goats as an ice cream seller pedalled by on his bike, were far more vocal.
"If the cleric gets charged in this case we are all behind him. There will be unrest," warned Tasleem Maqbool, a woman in a black veil who said her daughter saw Masih throwing away trash that included burned religious materials.
Village clerics like Chishti hold far more sway over Pakistanis than government officials. They lead prayers and give guidance on many aspects of life.
"The cleric should be freed," said Noman, a 12-year-old boy wearing a t-shirt and shorts as bearded men gathered at the village mosque and barefoot children played nearby.
"She (Masih) should be punished."
(Additional reporting by Aisha Chowdhry; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
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聖少女への銃弾 - 歪んだイスラム教と野獣たち - 怒りと涙
****
Taliban says it shot ‘infidel’ Pakistani teen for advocating girls’ rights
By Haq Nawaz Khan and Michele Langevine Leiby, Updated: Tuesday, October 9, 9:00 AMThe Washington Post
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A 14-year-old Pakistani activist who won international acclaim for speaking out for girls denied education under the Taliban was shot and seriously wounded Tuesday on her way home from school, authorities said.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai, who officials said was shot in the head by at least one gunman who approached a school bus in Mingora, a city in the scenic Swat valley in the country’s northwest.
Yousafzai was flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Peshawar, where officials said a bullet was lodged near her spine. Surgeons were unable to operate immediately because of swelling in her skull.
“Sending her abroad could save her life,” the military’s information office said.
A seventh-grade girl was shot in the leg, according to local police.
Taliban insurgents controlled Swat for two years until a massive military operation drove them out in May 2009, but sporadic attacks have continued in the area.
Yousafzai became known in early 2009, when she wrote a diary about Taliban atrocities under a pen name for the BBC’s Urdu service. In 2011, the Pakistani government awarded her a 1 million rupee ($10,500) prize and a peace award for her bravery in raising her voice for children’s rights and girls’ education when few others in Pakistan dared to.
Yousafzai also was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011.
The seventh-grader who was wounded in the leg said she and her classmates were leaving school when the attack occurred.
“Two bearded armed men stopped our school van and asked for Malala and opened fire from behind the van,” the girl, named Shazia, said from the hospital where she and Yousafzai were first taken.
Ihsanullah Ihsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said in calls to the media that the militant group targeted Yousafzai because she generated “negative propaganda” about Muslims.
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“She considers President Obama as her ideal. Malala is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity,” Ihsan said.
Political leaders condemned the attack.
“We have to fight the mind-set that is involved in this. We have to condemn it,” Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf told the Pakistani Senate. “Malala is like my daughter and yours, too. If that mind-set prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?”
Yousafzai also is an advocate for literacy in the Swat valley. She started her diary when the Taliban banned girls’ education and bombed hundreds of schools, mostly those for girls, in Swat.
Her father, Zia Uddin Yousafzai, is an educator and a member of Swat’s peace jirga, or tribal gathering.
“She is all right,” he said in an interview. “Please pray for her early recovery and health.”
After being forced out of Swat, Pakistani Taliban fighters relocated to the Afghan border region near the eastern Afghan provinces of Konar and Nurestan. They are blamed for attacks on Pakistani forces from across the border.
“This is a highly condemnable act of terror and an attempt to silence a brave voice,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, a spokesman for the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, said.
In her diary, Yousafzai wrote about her fears and growing Taliban influence. One morning, she wore her favorite pink dress. “During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colorful clothes as the Taliban would object to it,” she wrote.
In another entry, she wrote: “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 . . . .”
Michele Langevine Leiby reported from Islamabad. Richard Leiby in Islamabd also contributed reporting.
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人類や女性の敵タリバン−イスラム教テロリストグループの狂気
Opinions
A girl’s courage challenges us to act
By Laura Bush, Published: October 10The Washington Post
Laura Bush was first lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009. In November 2001, she gave the first presidential radio address on the treatment of women under the Taliban.
On Tuesday afternoon, Malala Yousafzai was a 14-year-old girl riding home on a school bus. Now, after a masked gunman apparently boarded her bus, asked for her by name and shot her in the head and neck, she is fighting for her life. Malala was targeted by the Pakistani Taliban because for the past three years she has spoken out for the rights of all girls to become educated. After this despicable shooting, a Taliban spokesman said that his organization considers Malala’s crusade for education rights an “obscenity” and accused her of “propagating” Western culture. If she survives, the group promises to try again to kill her.
Eleven years ago, America awoke to the barbaric mind-set of the Taliban. Its regime in Afghanistan was dedicated in part to the brutal repression and abject subjugation of women. Women were not allowed to work or attend school. Taliban religious police patrolled the streets, beating women who might venture out alone, who were not dressed “properly” or who dared to laugh out loud. Women could not wear shoes that made too much noise, and their fingernails were ripped out for the “crime” of wearing nail polish.
Today, the Taliban has been pushed back, but it still operates in parts of Afghanistan and in the northern and western regions of Pakistan along the Afghan border. The city where Malala was shot, Mingora, is in Pakistan’s Swat province, which has been on the front lines of the battle against Taliban extremists. In 2007, the Taliban gained control of Swat, only to be largely pushed out in the summer of 2009 by a Pakistani military offensive. During its time in power, the Taliban closed and destroyed girls’ schools, leaving behind little more than piles of rubble; enforced its own interpretation of sharia law; and banned the playing of music in cars.
At age 11, to protest what was happening in her homeland, Malala began to write about her experiences, producing a blog for the BBC’s Urdu-language service. She described wearing plain clothes, not uniforms, so that no one would know she was attending school and wrote about how she and other girls “hid our books under our shawls.” Nonetheless, after the Taliban forced the closure of her school, Malala had no choice but to stay home and suspend her education. In another blog entry, she wrote: “Five more schools have been destroyed, one of them was near my house. I am quite surprised, because these schools were closed so why did they also need to be destroyed?” A few weeks later she wrote, “I am sad watching my uniform, school bag and geometry box” and “hurt” because her brothers could go to school while she could not.
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Malala had dreamed of becoming a doctor, but recently she became interested in politics and speaking out for the rights of children. In 2011, Malala was a nominee for the International Children’s Peace Prize, which lauded her bravery in standing up for girls’ educational rights amid rising fundamentalism at a time when few adults would do the same. Last year, she was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. These are the accomplishments of the young girl who so terrified the Taliban.
Condemnations of the attempt on Malala’s life have been swift and powerful. The U.S. government called it “barbaric” and “cowardly.” Pakistan’s prime minister said, “Malala is like my daughter, and yours too. If that mind-set prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?” And the Pakistani army’s chief general said that the Taliban has “failed to grasp that she is not only an individual, but an icon of courage.”
Speaking out after an atrocious act, however, isn’t enough. Malala inspires us because she had the courage to defy the totalitarian mind-set others would have imposed on her. Her life represents a brighter future for Pakistan and the region. We must speak up before these acts occur, work to ensure that they do not happen again, and keep our courage to continue to resist the ongoing cruelty and barbarism of the Taliban. Malala Yousafzai refused to look the other way. We owe it to her courage and sacrifice to do the same.
Malala is the same age as another writer, a diarist, who inspired many around the world. From her hiding place in Amsterdam, Anne Frank wrote, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Today, for Malala and the many girls like her, we need not and cannot wait. We must improve their world.
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Runner-Up: Malala Yousafzai, the Fighter
By Aryn Baker / MingoraDec
2012/12/19 Ｔｉｍｅ
Ayesha Mir didn’t go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family’s car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things.
At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha’s father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. “She wants to speak to you,” he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances.
“This is Malala,” said the girl on the other end of the line. Malala Yousafzai, 15, was calling from the hospital in Birmingham, England, where under heavy guard she has been undergoing treatment since Oct. 16. “I understand that what happened was tragic, but you need to stay strong,” Malala told Ayesha. “You cannot give up.”
It was one of the few times Malala had called anyone in Pakistan since she was flown to England for specialized medical treatment after a Taliban assassin climbed onto her school bus, called out for her by name and shot her in the head on Oct. 9. Her brain is protected by a titanium plate that replaced a section of her skull removed to allow for swelling. But she spoke rapidly to the older girl in Urdu, encouraging her to stand up for her father even if doing so brought risks. As an outspoken champion of girls’ right to an education, Malala knew all about risk — and fear and consequences — when it comes to taking on the Taliban. “The way she spoke was so inspirational,” Ayesha says. “She made me realize that my father was fighting our enemies and that it was something I should be proud of, not afraid.” The next day Ayesha returned to school. And with that call, Malala began to return to what she seems born to do — passing her courage on to others.
Cover Photograph by Asim HafeezIn trying, and failing, to kill Malala, the Taliban appear to have made a crucial mistake. They wanted to silence her. Instead, they amplified her voice. Since October her message has been heard around the world, from cramped classrooms where girls scratch out lessons in the dirt to the halls of the U.N. and national governments and NGOs, where legions of activists argue ever more vehemently that the key to raising living standards throughout the developing world is the empowerment of women and girls. Malala was already a spokesperson; the Taliban made her a symbol, and a powerful one, since in the age of social media and crowdsourced activism, a parable as tragic and triumphant as hers can raise an army of disciples.
She has become perhaps the world’s most admired children’s-rights advocate, all the more powerful for being a child herself. Her primary cause — securing Pakistani girls’ access to education — has served to highlight broader concerns: the health and safety of the developing world’s children, women’s rights and the fight against extremism. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now the U.N.’s special envoy for global education, declared Nov. 10 Malala Day in honor of her and the more than 50 million girls around the world who are not at school. Nearly half a million people have signed petitions on Change.org to nominate her for the Nobel Peace Prize. That is not how the Taliban intended things to turn out.
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If Malala decides to continue her crusade, hers will be a platform backed with financial means and wired with well-connected allies. “She’d be great as both a fundraiser and a public speaker,” says former First Lady Laura Bush, who’s spent years campaigning for women’s rights in Taliban-controlled areas. Several funds and initiatives have been founded, including at least one that Malala and her father will directly influence once she has recovered. However, a return to Pakistan, where Malala would likely be most effective, would be fraught with danger. The Taliban have on several occasions sworn to target her again.
Long before she was an activist, Malala Yousafzai was a model student. By the time she was 21⁄2, she was sitting in class with 10-year-olds, according to a close family friend and teacher at the school founded by Malala’s father. The little girl with the huge hazel eyes didn’t say much, but “she could follow, and she never got bored,” says the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that she too might become a Taliban target. Malala loved the school, a rundown concrete-block building with a large rooftop terrace open to views of the snowcapped mountains that surround the Swat Valley. As she grew older, she was always first in her class. “She was an ordinary girl with extraordinary abilities,” says the teacher, “but she never had a feeling of being special.”
Malala spent most of her pocket money on books, says the teacher. She carried a Harry Potter schoolbag and read a biography of Benazir Bhutto as well as one of Barack Obama’s books. One of her favorite books was Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and she often quoted the well-known line about how the universe conspires to help when you want something.
Family friends attribute Malala’s precociousness to her father, a social activist who believes that the education of girls is vital to Pakistan’s future. Ziauddin Yousafzai opened Khushal School and College 17 years ago with the aim of building a new generation of female leaders. Samar Minallah Khan, a documentary filmmaker who got to know the Yousafzais in 2010 when she made a film about the school, was astounded by the ambition and character of the girls she met. “Each and every girl in that school is a Malala,” says Khan, “and the credit goes to her father and the teachers and the principal.”
In September 2008, as the Pakistani Taliban gained a significant foothold in Swat and started enforcing their strict interpretations of Islamic law, Yousafzai took Malala to the provincial capital of Peshawar for an event at the city’s press club. There, in front of the national press, the 11-year-old gave a speech titled “How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” The speech was well received, but many worried that confronting the Taliban so brazenly might put Malala in danger. “People said to me, ‘How can you let her do this?’” Yousafzai told a reporter at the time. “We needed to stand up,” he reasoned.
Some believe that Malala was simply not old enough to make what were essentially life-or-death decisions. “I think Zia was imposing his own thoughts about girls’ education on her,” says Dr. Mohammad Ayub, a psychiatrist from Swat who manages the hospital where Malala was taken immediately after the shooting. Malala, he says, “was like a suicide bomber, brainwashed into putting herself in danger. Child prostitutes, child soldiers, child laborers and child heroes — they are all exploited children, in my opinion, and it shouldn’t be allowed.” People who know Malala personally, however, insist that she knew what she was doing. “No one on this earth can dictate to Malala,” says Khan.
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In late 2008, the BBC Urdu service proposed to Yousafzai that one of his students blog anonymously about what it was like going to school under Taliban rule. Malala volunteered to do it herself. She dived into the new project with dark humor. “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying, ‘I will kill you,’” she wrote on Jan. 3, 2009. “I hastened my pace … to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”
Even though her diary entries were anonymous, Malala apparently had few qualms about speaking openly to a national audience. On the evening of Feb. 18, 2009, she was attending an anti-Taliban protest with her father in Swat’s capital, Mingora, where she spied broadcaster Hamid Mir, who was in town reporting. She ran up to him and asked to be on his show. Intrigued, he put her on. “All I want is an education,” she told Mir and his audience. “And I am afraid of no one.”
By the time the Taliban were driven from Swat seven months later, Malala had become a visible advocate for girls’ education. She campaigned to raise government spending on schools (at the moment it’s a miserable 2% of GDP, compared with the U.S. average expenditure of about 5.4%) and encouraged families to break with tribal tradition and allow their daughters to attend classes. A number of schools were renamed in her honor. She met with the late Richard Holbrooke, then the U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, to plead for assistance for Pakistani schools.
But in December 2009, Malala, whose identity as the BBC blogger had been something of an open secret for several months, was publicly identified by her father, who was proud of her accomplishments. The leader of the Swat Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah, decided it was time to silence Malala and sent two men to kill her. “We did not want to kill her, as we knew it would cause us a bad name in the media,” Sirajuddin Ahmad, a senior commander and spokesman for the Swat Taliban, told TIME. “But there was no other option.”
When the converted truck that serves as the Khushal school bus came to a stop on Oct. 9 this year, few of the 14 girls and three teachers crammed onto the two long benches inside even noticed. They were too busy chatting about the exams they had just completed. Shazia Ramzan, a 13-year-old sitting next to Malala near the open back of the truck, was the first to see the gunman. “Which one is Malala?” he barked. Terrified, the girls fell silent. “I think we must have looked at her,” admits Shazia. “We didn’t say anything, but we must have looked, because then he shot her.” Shazia screamed when she saw Malala slump forward. The gunman turned and shot Shazia and another girl, neither fatally. The gunman fled.
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The bullet that hit Malala, according to doctors who are treating her, pierced the skin just behind her left eye, traveled along the exterior of her skull, nicked her jawbone, went through her neck and lodged in the muscle just above her left shoulder blade. Surgeons in Pakistan removed a section of her skull during an operation on Oct. 10 and embedded it in the flesh of her abdomen; as long as it’s inside her body, it will likely remain viable until her doctors decide it is time to take off the titanium plate and patch her skull back together. She will probably face several more months of rehabilitation. Doctors treating her at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham do not expect her to suffer permanent brain damage.
Besides her call to Ayesha Mir, she is showing other small but telling signs of wanting to resume her role as an activist. The first pictures taken of her after the shooting showed a powerless victim of violence: on her back, swollen, possibly dying. That didn’t happen again. For subsequent photos released after her surgery, friends say, she insisted that she be photographed with a book in hand and her headscarf carefully draped to hide any signs of damage — both as a nod to tradition and so that supporters would know that her priorities had not changed.
Even as she quietly recovers, her story has lit a fire. Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been flooded with gifts and cards from all over the world and donations now totaling $13,700 for Malala and her family. Meanwhile, a group of graduate students in the U.S. has teamed up with a Yousafzai family friend to raise almost $50,000. In the days immediately following the shooting, several charities and NGOs received boosts in donations directed toward girls’ education in Pakistan. And on Dec. 10, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari announced the establishment of a $10 million education fund in Malala’s name.
Malala also now has numerous powerful supporters, including a group of well-connected people like Megan Smith, a vice president at Google, and Mark Kelly, an astronaut and the husband of former Congresswoman and shooting survivor Gabby Giffords, who have helped established the Malala Fund, which will offer grants to organizations and individuals working in education. The plan is for Malala, when she’s better, to sit on the board along with her father and make decisions about who should receive the grants.
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And her father has an important new job: on Dec. 9, Gordon Brown announced that Ziauddin would be his special adviser on global education.
But as Malala knows perhaps better than anyone else, the forces aligned against her are intimidating and entrenched. Although she has said through her father that she is determined to return to Swat, it’s quite possible that she will be forced to remain in England, where she has security and an unfettered opportunity to study. (The Pakistani government has promised to cover the cost of her education should she stay in the U.K.) That will only allow her critics — and there are many, including people who believe the shooting was staged or even invented — to insist that she and her family have forsaken the country they claim to care so much about.
In the face of such pressure, and after all she has been through, it would be understandable if Malala essentially retired at age 15. She may decide that she’s already done enough. Perhaps, in spite of the threats that are still directed at her, she will go back to Mingora to finish her education and raise a family, as is traditional for most girls and women in the region. There, her family’s home, a small gated compound shaded by a massive orange tree heavy with unplucked fruit, is watched over by family friends. Her tiny ninth-grade classroom on the second floor of the school is crammed with 31 students — and has one empty desk. Her best friend, Moniba, used a white correction pen to inscribe Malala in girlish cursive onto the desk’s battered wooden armrest. “This is Malala’s desk,” says Moniba, who sits at the adjacent seat. “It will stay empty until she comes back.”
If she doesn’t, all it takes is a quick scan of the school’s crowded classrooms to understand that there are 400 Malalas prepared to take her place. Not all of them will be as bold or articulate as Malala, perhaps. But each one has returned to Khushal with the full knowledge that Malala’s attackers are still at large. These girls have overcome fear to go to school. At the very least, they will fight for the right of their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters, to do the same. Malala’s classmates were already brave. She has made them, and girls all over the world, braver still.
— with reporting by megan gibson and sonia van gilder cooke/london and mehboob ali/mingoran
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とても良いニュース。全快するのが心から待たれる。
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Pakistani teen activist to have reconstructive cranial surgery
By Janet Stobart
January 30, 2013, 7:24 a.m.
LONDON -- Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teen who was shot by the Taliban after campaigning for the rights of women and girls for an education, will undergo her final cranial surgery in a few days, her British doctors told reporters Wednesday.
The medical director of Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth hospital, where Malala has been treated since mid-October, outlined in a televised news conference the complex cranial reconstruction procedure.
Malala, 15, gained online fame through the blog she began as an 11-year-old schoolgirl about attending school in an area of Pakistan's Swat Valley under strict Taliban rule, which bans girls from receiving a secondary education.
The blog was transmitted via the BBC and she quickly received wide attention and status as a young campaigner for girls’ rights. In October, Taliban gunmen boarded her school bus and shot her at point-blank range.
After emergency treatment in Pakistan, she was flown to Queen Elizabeth, which specializes in treating military casualties. She was discharged Jan. 3 and is due for what doctors hope will be her last cranial reconstruction procedure.
David Rosser, the medical director, said that within the next 10 days she will undergo cranial reconstruction to repair the left side of her skull, which was shattered by a bullet. She had previously undergone surgery as an outpatient “to repair the left facial nerve, which was damaged by the course of the bullet,” he said.
In a coming procedure she will receive a cochlear implant, Rosser said, noting: "The passage of the bullet destroyed both her eardrum and the middle ear and the tiny bones within the middle ear.”
Malala is currently deaf in her left ear but should recover her hearing after complex implant surgery.
Rosser paid tribute to the emergency treatment performed by the Pakistani hospital as well as to the teenager herself for her determination.
“Her recovery is remarkable and it’s undoubtedly a testament ... to her resilience and her strength," he said. "There’s also no doubt that the surgery performed in Pakistan was lifesaving. Had that first operation not been to such a high standard she wouldn’t have survived.”
There should be no long-term damage such as the kind often resulting from head injuries, he said.
"She’s not naïve at all about what happened to her," he said, but Malala is "incredibly determined to speak for her cause.”
Tributes have poured into a hospital website opened for goodwill messages from well-wishers and supporters, many asking for her candidacy for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
Since her recovery in the Birmingham hospital, she has been joined by her immediate family. Her father, Ziaududdin Yousufzai, has been appointed education attaché at the Pakistani consulate in Birmingham.
狂った宗教
*****
Two teenage sisters shot dead in Pakistan for dancing in the rain
Five gunmen killed Noor Basra, 15, Noor Sheza, 16, and their mother, Noshehra, after a video of the three dancing in traditional garb in the rain went viral. It is believed stepbrother Khutore ordered the death as an 'honor' killing for the video. He has since been arrested.
By Nina Golgowski / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, July 1, 2013, 10:14 AM
Two teenage sisters have been shot dead in Pakistan because they danced in the rain in a video. Their mother was also killed.Two teenage sisters have been shot dead in Pakistan for allegedly dancing in the rain.
Sisters Noor Basra, 15, Noor Sheza, 16, and their mother, Noshehra, were shot dead by five gunmen after a video of the two girls enjoying the rain shower in traditional dress spread throughout their conservative northern town.
The sisters' stepbrother is now being blamed for ordering their deaths on June 23 in an effort to restore the family's "honor" six months after the video surfaced.
That 22-year-old stepbrother, Khutore, has since been arrested for carrying out the attack according to police.
"It seems that the two girls have been murdered after they were accused of tarnishing their family's name by making a video of themselves dancing in the rain," an officer confirmed to News24Online.
In the video the two girls are seen wearing traditional shalwar kameez trouser suits and green and purple headscarves.
Around them are two younger children they run after while directly outside their home in Chilas.
One girl momentarily breaks from their dance to flash a smile at the camera.
This latest tragedy comes one year after four women were executed for singing and dancing with men at a wedding in a remote village of Kohistan in northwest Pakistan.
Tribal elders ordered the women to be shot dead for allegedly tarnishing their families' names by their acts of "fornication."
Women and men dancing is a strict violation of Sharia law with about a thousand "honor killings" taking place in Pakistan annually to amend acts like this, according to women's rights group the Aurat Foundation.
Of those killings committed nearly 77 percent end in the acquittal of criminals, according to Human Rights Commission activist Tahira Abdullah.
