Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai arrives for a photo opportunity before speaking at an event in New York, October 10, 2013.
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK | Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:17am IST
(Reuters) - Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girl's education, spoke on Thursday of the possibility of winning this year's Nobel Peace Prize and said she might like to be Pakistan's prime minister one day.
"If I get the Nobel Peace Prize, I think it will be such a great honor, and more than I deserve, and such a great responsibility as well," she told an audience at a New York City cultural center on Thursday night.
A win would "help me to begin this campaign for girls' education, but the real goal, the most precious goal that I want to get and for which I am thirsty and I want to struggle hard for, that is the award of seeing every child to go to school," she added.
Yousafzai, 16, a favorite among experts and betting agencies to be named the winner of the prestigious prize, which is to be announced on Friday, was in conversation with journalist Christiane Amanpour, at the 92nd Street Y, a cultural center in Manhattan.
After receiving death threats from the Taliban for defying the Islamist militant group with her outspoken views on the right to education, Yousafzai was shot a year ago while on a school bus near her village in Swat in northwestern Pakistan.
"You may call him a boy," she said of her shooter, describing him as barely older than herself. She recovered after she was flown to Britain for surgery.
Yousafzai started her campaigning by writing a blog in 2009 in which she described how the Taliban prevented girls like her from going to school. She said being shot had only strengthened her resolve.
"They can only shoot a body, they cannot shoot my dreams," she said. "They shot me because they wanted to tell me that, 'we want to kill you and to stop you campaigning', but they did the biggest mistake: they inured me, and they told me through that attack, that even death is supporting me, even death does not want to kill me."
In a wide-ranging conversation, Yousafzai told the audience she admired Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to become a prime minister of Pakistan, who was assassinated in 2007.
Yousafzai said that for a time she thought she might try to become a doctor, but now wants to go into politics, and perhaps become prime minister of her country one day.
"By becoming a doctor I can only help my community, but by becoming a politician I can help my whole country," she said. "I can be a doctor for the whole country."
She sat along aside her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who said that, although the attack on his daughter was the "worst trauma," he had no regrets about encouraging her to be strong-willed.
"Extraordinary situations create extraordinary characters," he said. His daughter's book, "I Am Malala," was the second-best-selling book on Amazon.com on Thursday.
She has not returned to Pakistan since she was attacked, and says she misses it. She mostly listened to Western music back home in her village, particularly that by Justin Bieber, but now is listening to more Pashto and Urdu music to remind her of home.
When she returns, she said, she wants to tell the Taliban to "be peaceful, and that their jihad is to fight through pens, through words."
The outspoken teen won the European Union's annual human rights award on Thursday, beating fugitive U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought has been awarded by the European Parliament each year since 1988 to commemorate Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. Its past winners include Nelson Mandela and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, both of whom also won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Malala meets the Queen [ VIDEO 1:02 a nice one ] 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai meets Queen Elizabeth where she shares her views on girls' education and presents her book I Am Malala.
London: Teenager Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, spoke to the Queen about the importance of education when they met at Buckingham Palace.
The 16-year-old was shot in the head in Pakistan last October after campaigning for the right of girls to go to school without fear, in a part of the country where Islamic fundamentalists were trying to impose a strict form of Sharia.
Malala was a guest at a reception for Commonwealth, youth and education hosted by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on Friday. -
Reception: Malala Yousafzai, with her father, reacts to Prince Philip's joke after meeting the Queen. Photo: AP
She was reduced to laughter by a comment from the Duke, who quipped that in Britain people want children to go to school to get them out of the house. Malala covered her face while in a fit of giggles.
The teenager, accompanied by her father Ziauddin, gave the Queen a copy of her book, I Am Malala, during their meeting in the palace's White Drawing Room, telling her: ''It is a great honour for me to be here, and I wanted to present you with this book.''
Accepting the gift, the Queen replied: ''That's very kind of you.''
Malala told the Queen she was passionate about every child having a right to an education, everywhere around the world.
She added: ''Especially in this country as well.
''I have heard about many children that can't go to school, and I want to continue our work.''
Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, also spoke to the Queen and Duke about their past visits to his home country.
Malala was flown from Pakistan to Britain for medical treatment after she was shot. Her surgeons said she came within centimetres of death when the bullet grazed her brain in the attack on a school bus.
She was treated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and has settled in the city with her family. Since the attack, she has addressed the United Nations and has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize.
Princess Beatrice and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were also present at the reception, attended by 350 guests from academic institutions around the world.
The reception included a performance from the Commonwealth Youth Orchestra and choir.
Afghan Woman in Famed National Geographic Photo Is Arrested in Pakistan
"Malala Yousafzai: Her incredible year"
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and ISMAIL KHANOCT. 26, 2016
Sharbat Gula, left on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, and then nearly two decades later, after she was featured in a story in the magazine about being reunited with the photographer. Credit Steve McCurry/National Geographic Society, via Agence france-presse
An Afghan woman whose photograph as a young refugee with piercing green eyes was published on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, becoming a symbol of the turmoil of war in Afghanistan, is facing charges in Pakistan of fraudulently obtaining national identity cards.
The arrest .. http://www.dawn.com/news/1292383 .. on Wednesday of the woman, Sharbat Gula, came as the Pakistani authorities are cracking down on Afghans with illegal national identity cards. Ms. Gula was arrested at her residence in the northwestern city of Peshawar after more than a year of investigation, said Shahid Ilyas, the assistant director of the Federal Investigation Authority.
“We raided the house and picked her up,” he said. “It took us a while to collect all the evidence against her, and the officials involved in helping her and her two sons get Pakistani national identity cards.”
He added, “We have the evidence now, and we are going to go for prosecution.”
The Pakistani authorities said Ms. Gula had illegally obtained a Pakistani identity card in 1988 and a computerized identity card in 2014, while retaining her Afghan passport, which she used in 2014 to travel to Saudi Arabia for the hajj.
She faces up to 14 years in prison and a fine of $3,000 to $5,000 if she is convicted, according to the Dawn newspaper.
Her arrest goes to the heart of an ordeal confronting many Afghan refugees who fled across the border into Pakistan because of decades of war. The Pakistani crackdown on Afghans appears to have intensified since May, when the former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour was killed in a drone strike .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/us/politics/afghanistan-pakistan-taliban-leader.html .. in Baluchistan Province.
He had been traveling with forged Pakistani documents, officials said.
Gerry Simpson, a senior researcher and advocate for the Refugee Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, wrote online that 1.5 million Afghans in Pakistan have received “proof of registration” cards, which protected them from deportation .. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/26/national-geographics-afghan-girl-faces-deportation-pakistan . About one million more who did not get the paperwork resorted to using false identity cards. Mr. Simpson wrote that Pakistan was now on a mission to repatriate all Afghans.
The Pakistani authorities have revoked or blocked thousands of national identity cards illegally obtained by foreigners. Ms. Gula, who is believed to be in her 40s, was caught up in that dragnet when she was arrested. A court said on Wednesday that she could be kept in custody for two days while the authorities investigated.
Ms. Gula was known as “the Afghan girl” when Steve McCurry’s photograph of her wearing a red scarf and staring directly at the camera became world famous in the ’80s. After the United States invaded Afghanistan, the photographer searched in 2002 for the schoolgirl he had photographed in a Pakistani refugee camp.
He found her in the mountains of Afghanistan and put a name to the face.
Mr. McCurry said in an email on Wednesday that he had been informed of the arrest through a friend and was trying to find out more. “I am committed to doing anything and everything possible to provide legal and financial support for her and her family,” he said.
“We object to this action by the authorities in the strongest possible terms,” he said. “She has suffered throughout her entire life, and we believe that her arrest is an egregious violation of her human rights.”
According to the 2002 National Geographic article .. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2002/04/afghan-girl-revealed/ .. about Mr. McCurry’s journey to find Ms. Gula, her exact age in the refugee camp had been unknown at the time because there were no records, but she was believed to have been 12.
When he went back to look for her, she had returned to the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. He discovered that she belonged to the Pashtun ethnic group, and that she had returned to her village in Afghanistan during a lull in the fighting.
She agreed to be photographed again because her husband told her it would be proper, he said.
The magazine article described the adult Ms. Gula: “Time and hardship had erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened.”
Christine Hauser reported from New York and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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