Let me emphasize. Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year old girl who spoke out against the Taliban's rule in the mountainous region bordering Pakistan and its attempts to supress women's education, was deliberately assassinated by Taliban thugs. For asking girls to be educated.
Police said a bearded man approached the bus and asked which of the girls was Malala. When one of the girls pointed at her she denied it. The gunman shot both girls, although police say three people were wounded in all.
A Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, claimed responsibility on behalf of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani offshoot of the Taliban movement notorious for its restrictions of women's freedom and female education during the five years before late 2001 when they were in power in Afghanistan.
"She was pro-west, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader," Ehsan told Reuters. "She was young but she was promoting western culture in Pashtun areas," he said, referring to the main ethnic group in north-western Pakistan and Afghanistan from which the Taliban finds most of its followers.
The Taliban had previously announced the girl was on their "hit list" because of her backing for "the imposition of secular government" in Swat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/09/taliban-pakistan-shoot-girl-malala-yousafzaiSo far she and the rest of the group seem to have survived. Doctors have
removed the bullet from her head, though at this time it remains to see how badly she is truly injured. The shooting has jarred the Pakistani nation, horrified that such an incident is occurring. Many of the leftists are tying this to the government's limp response to the Taliban and the country's general backwards direction due to the Islamists.
Murtaza Salangi, the director of Pakistan Radio, said people were standing up to be counted as if this was their own daughter.
"I think it is a watershed moment because the outpouring of sympathy and support for this young girl is just unprecedented. She could be a rallying poster for people who think that extremism and terrorism is the biggest challenge, even an existential challenge, for this country."
He said the mood of revulsion extended beyond just the "educated elite", saying the switchboard at Radio Pakistan's Peshawar studio had "lit up like Christmas lights" after phone lines were opened for people across the country to contact a phone-in programme.
Rana Jawad, Islamabad bureau chief of Geo, the country's biggest news channel, compared footage played throughout the day of the unconscious Malala being loaded on to a helicopter to a 2009 clip showing a woman in Swat being beaten by the Taliban, which was constantly replayed and horrified the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/09/taliban-pakistan-shoot-girl-malala-yousafzai?intcmp=239Assassinating girls for asking to be educated. Great job assholes.
