Principal Murdered in Pakistan: Latest Assault on Girls' Schooling - DailyBeast [View all]

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Principal Murdered in Pakistan: Latest Assault on Girls' Schooling
by Gordon Brown - DailyBeast
Mar 30, 2013 2:37 PM EDT


Pakistani schoolchildren attend their daily classes in a makeshift school set in a clay house, in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, March 27, 2013. Threats from militant groups is one of many obstacles Pakistani girls and teachers face in getting and providing an education. Others include rampant poverty, harassment and the government's failure to prioritize education spending. Both sexes have suffered from the lack of funding, but girls, who have lower rates of literacy and school attendance, are in a particularly perilous position. (Muhammed Muheisen/AP)

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As pupils gathered early on Saturday to receive exam results, grenades were hurled into the Baldia town school in Karachi, causing carnage. Principal Abdur Rasheed died on the spot. The perpetrators are thought to be from TPP, a Taliban terrorist sect, as their campaign of violence against girls education moves from the tribal areas into Pakistan's largest city.

The latest attack follows the murder earlier this week in the Khyber tribal district of Shahnaz Nazli, a 41-year-old teacher gunned down in front of one of her children only 200 meters from the all-girls school where she taught. But this time the wave of terror attacks – orchestrated by opponents of girls' education – is provoking a domestic and international response, a groundswell of public revulsion similar to that which followed the attempted assassination of Malala Yousefvai, who was also shot simply for wanting girls to go to school.

Today, on top of a a petition now circulating on www.educationenvoy.org calling for a cessation of violence against teachers who are defending the right of girls to go to school, a scholarship fund in honor of the slain Shahnaz Nazli is being announced. Education International, the world teachers organization with 30 million members, has said that the scholarship memorial to Shahnaz will support Pakistan teachers and students victimized simply because of their support for girls' schooling.

The petition and the memorial signal a fight back against attempts to ban girls’ education, and come in the wake of the intervention of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who, in a special communique, has spoken out against the shooting of Shahnaz and given his personal support to teachers persecuted for their advocacy of girls’ education.

This week's attacks are, however, a stark reminder to the world of the persistence of threats, intimidation, shootings, arson attacks and sometimes even murder that are the Taliban’s weapons in a war against girls’ opportunity.

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