The voice of change
Malala Yousafzai has shown the world the stupidity of denying education to girls, writes SALLY ARMSTRONG.
‘They thought a bullet would silence us, but they failed. Out of the silence came a voice: weakness, fear and hopelessness died; strength, power and courage were born.”
Malala Yousafzai has become the voice of girls throughout the world. She is the epitome of the change that is sweeping nation after nation today. Only a few years ago we would likely never have heard her story. When the cowardly Taliban shot her in the head on October 9, 2012, for daring to go to school and speak up for girls’ education, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the people living in the Swat Valley dismissed the news: “So what? She’s a girl.” Elsewhere, had we heard the story, we would have tut-tutted and said, “How dreadful, but it’s the way they treat their girls. There’s nothing we can do.”
Instead, Malala’s story made every newspaper in the world and every radio and television broadcast; people stayed tuned as news spread about where she was being treated and when she was being transferred, first to Islamabad and then to London, England. In February we saw all the details of the reconstruction cranial surgery and the cochlear implant the doctors would use to restore some of her hearing. I was in Victoria when I had a call from a news agency. “Hurry,” they said. “We need a news hit. Malala just got out of the hospital.” Then in early March — she was in the news again. Sporting a little pink backpack, Malala was returning to school.
She had become the world’s daughter. It was as though the citizens of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas had lifted a curtain and suddenly saw the extraordinary stupidity of refusing to educate girls and the consequences of kowtowing to the extremists who claim they are acting in the name of God when they shoot 15-year-old girls in the head for wanting to learn to read. Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations said, “When the Taliban shot Malala, they showed what they fear most: a girl with a book.” The economists have been claiming that educated girls can turn the economy of the village around. But more than that, the girls on the ground have found their voices — so have their mothers. In Afghanistan, the women refer to their illiteracy as being blind. One woman explained the seemingly bizarre connection: “I couldn’t read so I couldn’t see what was going on.” The thugs in power have used that ploy for centuries: keep the people ignorant so they can’t see what’s going on.
Malala can see. She has that elusive “it” factor — the one that combines strength and sweetness, resolve with vision. She wore the late Benazir Bhutto’s scarf and brilliantly combined the Prophet Mohammed with Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Ghandi when she spoke in her straightforward, from-the-heart style at the UN.
When Malala stood up on July 12 and said, “There was a time when women asked men to stand up for women’s rights. This time we’ll do it for ourselves,” she put the world on alert. Her army of activists was already at work in Kabul where Young Women for Change is aiming to “alter the emotional landscape of Afghanistan.” They claim that 67 per cent of the population of Afghanistan is under the age of 30. “We never started a war,” says co-founder Anita Haidery. “We never fought a war. We hate these old customs. We want change, and we have the tools to make change — Facebook and Twitter.” And in Kenya where 160 girls between the ages of three and 17 sued their government for failing to protect them from being raped and won the case. They won it for 15 million girls in Kenya — kids who were being used by men who had the hideous notion that having sex with a little girl will cure them of HIV-AIDS and the younger the child, the stronger the cure. There are laws that criminalize rape in Kenya, but men have almost total impunity. The journey these kids took together was about girls who dared to bust the taboo on speaking out about sexual assault; it was about kids who were told they had no rights but insisted that they do. And it was the push-back reaction every woman and girl in the world has been waiting for.
It’s not just the new-found leaders like Malala who are driving change. The foot soldiers in this war against oppressors of women and girls are also marching. In India when Jyoti Singh Pandey was raped to death by a bunch of hooligans in a bus, a curtain was also raised. Her legacy is that the brutal story ripped the lid off 50 years of secrecy about the status of women in India. As it turns out, the fastest growing democracy in the world and the hottest economy needs to change the way it treats 50 per cent of its population. Now the women of India are on the street, demanding change. And the world is watching from a different lens.
“Thousands have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured. I’m just one of them,” said Malala. “Here I stand, one girl among many. I speak not for myself, but so that those without a voice can be heard. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”
Like a modern-day Joan of Arc, this now 16-year-old kid recovering from a bullet wound to the head got the attention of the world. She has the platform; the world is listening. It’s Malala Day.