Pakistan outraged over attack of young activist

Malala Yousafzai, age 14, wrote diary entries for the international news when she was only 11 years old about her life in the Swat Valley while it was controlled by the Taliban. Under the Taliban, girls were no longer permitted to go to school. She wrote her diary entries under a pen name and helped expose the suffering caused by the militants and how she was attempting to continue her education despite the Taliban’s presence. Even though she used a pen name, once the Taliban were ousted from the region she and her family routinely recieved death threats. Recently, someone attempted to follow through on those threats. Yesterday, as she and some other girls were walking home from school, they were stopped. Malala recieved a gunshot wound to the shoulder and another girl remains in critical condition. All the girls were rushed to the hosital, and Malala is allegedly stable after doctors removed the bullet from her shoulder. She is still unconscious in a Peshwar hospital. The decision has yet to be made about whether or not to send her abroad for treatment. Reportedly the Taliban have made the statement that they were responsible for the attack on Malala because she “promoted secularism.” The Pakistani public has responded to this attack with a wave of fury. Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik has stated that those responsible for the attack have been identified and says they will “not let them run away, we will catch them and punih them.” Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani made a statement that “The cowards who attacked Malala and her fellow students have shown time and again how little regard they have for human life and how low they can fall in their cruel ambition to impose their twisted ideology.”