Malala: Día Internacional de la Mujer

¡ No podemos consentir que se maltrate a nadie por sus ideas, ni por su sexo, raza o creencia¡

La noticias que aparecen en prensa sobre ésto, nos impresionan y nos solidarizan, pero pronto caen en el olvido. No dejemos que esto ocurra.Hoy Día Internacional de la Mujer ( y mi opinión es que no debiera existir ese día, pues son 365 al año de igualdad), quiero recordar a Malala. Mencionando este nombre, poco más se puede decir.

For her article on Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl from Mingora, Pakistan, who was recently shot for speaking out against the Taliban, Vanity Fair writer-at-large Marie Brennersets out to answer the question; How did a girl from a remote village become a cosmic force for change as well as a focus for a number of complex agendas? Brenner speaks with Syed Irfan Ashraf, the reporter who helped put Malala in the spotlight, who tells her, “It is criminal what I did . . . I lured in a child of 11 . . . We had to get the story out . . . We took a very brave 11-year-old and created her to get the attention of the world. We made her a commodity. Then she and her father had to step into the roles we gave them.”

Ashraf tells Brenner he discovered Malala in November 2007 when Mingora was first under siege. He recalls hearing her voice on an edit of the night’s news broadcast. “I’m very frightened,” she said in a remarkably eloquent Urdu. “Earlier, the situation was quite peaceful in Swat, but now it has worsened. Nowadays explosions are increasing . . . We can’t sleep. Our siblings are terrified, and we cannot come to school.”

A couple of years after first meeting Malala, Ashraf began working as a fixer with New York Times video journalist Adam Ellick, who wrote Ashraf an e-mail stating, “We need a main character to follow . . . The family and daughters should be expressive and have strong personalities and emotions.” Ashraf was also in touch with the BBC’s Abdul Hai Kakar, who said, “I’m looking for a girl who could bring the human side to this catastrophe.” Ashraf responded, “An Anne Frank?,” and ended up suggesting Malala to both Ellick and Kakar, and serving as an intermediary between the Yousafzai family and the press. 

Ashraf and Ellick began filming Malala for a New York Times documentary, “Class Dismissed,”while she was anonymously blogging for the BBC. Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, was resistant but reluctantly accommodated Ashraf. “I did not want to impose my liberalism on my daughter,” Ziauddin later said, “but a close friend said, ‘This documentary will do more for Swat than you could do in 100 years.’ I could not imagine the bad consequences.” Ashraf states, “I kept telling him in Pashto, ‘Don’t worry about the security.’ This was criminal on my part.” Ashraf recalls the fateful morning Malala woke up to find a camera crew setting up for a shot in her bedroom. “She was shy…. I said, ‘Be natural. Don’t look at the camera. Pretend we are not here.’ It took her hours to understand. We helped to mold her into a part—a part she very much believed.” When asked if it ever occurred to him he could be putting Malala in danger, Ashraf responds, “Of course not. She was a child…. The Pashtun tradition is that all children are spared from harm.”

Ashraf tells Brenner he remembers receiving the devastating news that Malala had been shot on the school bus home on October 9th of last year. “Are we responsible?,” Ellick asked Ashraf frantically over the phone. Later, consoling Ashraf, Ellick said, “We did nothing wrong.” Ashraf expresses guilt at having teased such strong beliefs out of a girl who lived in a world where strong beliefs are perceived as a threat. “I’m part of a system that continuously gave them awards … which emboldened her … and made her more public, more brash, more outspoken.”

Malala is currently in England with her father, recovering from the extensive damage the bullet has done to her speech and hearing. In March, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. “That little girl stood up and was not deterred,” says Faranahz Isaphani, of the Pakistani People’s Party. “She paid a terrible price, but the price she paid may have awoken the world in a way that nothing else has.”