Pakistani schoolgirl shot by Taliban receives human rights Politkovskaya Award
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen shot by the Taliban in 2012 for campaigning for girls' schooling, received a human rights award named after the slain Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.
The group RAW (Reach All Women) in War said
Yousafzai had been chosen for the Anna Politkovskaya Award “for her courage to speak out when nobody else dared,” for giving a voice to many women and girls and for promoting female education.
The 16-year-old was presented with the award in London on Friday, nearly seven years after the Russian investigative journalist was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building on Oct 7, 2006.
Malala said she hoped she could be as courageous as Politkovskaya was.
“I am extremely proud to have been chosen to receive an award, which bears her name and hope that I may be as brave as she was,” AFP cites her as saying.
"I greatly admire Anna's dedication to truth, to equality, and to humanity," Malala added.
The award was presented by Nicholas Winton, now 104, who was dubbed the ‘British Schindler’ for his role in saving the lives of more than 600 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939.
Malala is among the favorites for the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced on October 11. She has also been shortlisted for the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.
On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus.
AFTER RECIEVING HUMANITARIAN OF THE YEAR AWARDMalala Yousafzai, an outspoken proponent for girls' education, was at Harvard on Friday to accept the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award.
Malala was shot in the head last October. Militants said she was attacked because she was critical of the Taliban, not because of her views on education.
Survivor: Malala Yousafzai addresses students and faculty after receiving the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award at Harvard University
Malala Yousafzai, left, is presented with the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award by Director of the Harvard Foundation and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School Dr. S. Allen Counter
The 16-year-old Malala said she hopes to become a politician because politicians can have influence on a broad scale.
She spoke nostalgically about her home region, the Swat Valley, and said she hopes to return someday. She called it a "paradise" but described a dangerous area where militants blew up dozens of schools and sought to discourage girls from going to school by snatching pens from their hands.
Students, she said, reacted by hiding their books under their shawls so people wouldn't know they were going to school.
"The so-called Taliban were afraid of women's power and were afraid of the power of education," she told hundreds of students, faculty members and well-wishers who packed Harvard's ornate Sanders
Theater for the award ceremony.
Malala highlighted the fact that very few people spoke out against what was happening in her home region.
Malala highlighted the fact that very few people spoke out against what was happening in her home region.
"Although few people spoke, but the voice for peace and education was powerful," she said.
Malala also described waking up in a United Kingdom hospital, where she was taken for emergency treatment following the assassination attempt in Pakistan.
Pride: Malala Yousafzai's father Ziauddin Yousafzai stands as he is given a standing ovation at Harvard
"And when I was in Birmingham, I didn't know where I was, I didn't know where my parents are, I didn't know who has shot me and I had no idea what was happening," she said. "But I thank God that I'm alive."
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, paid a special tribute to Malala in a message read publicly during her award ceremony.
"Your courage," Jagland said in the tribute, "is sending a strong message to women to stand up for their rights, which constitutes a precondition for peace."
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