MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Nobel Peace for Muslim and Hindu activists struggling against oppression of children
Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education, and Indian children's right activist Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Yousafzai, aged 17, becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner by far. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesWorthy winners both. My heartfelt congratulations.
Oct 11th, 2014 - 07:59 am - Link - Report abuse 0A courageous young woman.
Oct 11th, 2014 - 09:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0Both definitely worthy winners.
Oct 11th, 2014 - 10:14 am - Link - Report abuse 0No problem with Malala. Putting one's life on the line must always be recognised. Satyarthi just seems to be a campaign organiser. Huge numbers of people have done the same. However worthy the cause, many governments do the same thing. Nope. He's not worth it.
Oct 11th, 2014 - 10:23 am - Link - Report abuse 0Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education is a beacon of hope in a troubled world.
Oct 11th, 2014 - 03:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Long may her light shine!
@5
Oct 12th, 2014 - 04:39 pm - Link - Report abuse 0To be fair, that light needs to shine in Pakistan. When did preaching to the converted ever achieve anything?
When I see the President of Pakistan sharing a stage with her and agreeing with every word she says in front of their countrymen, yes there we would have an achievement.
@6
Oct 12th, 2014 - 10:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I agree that you have a very good point there re: the President and the country. However, the 'converted' can add pressure via diplomacy, threatening to withhold trade deals and other soft-power measures. Hopefully she is influencing the decision-makers and the opinion-formers amongst the converted. Just as Nelson Mandela did in his own way. Apartheid died due to both internal AND external pressure.
It all helps. This is also a form of apartheid, segregating and denying a sector of society from reaching its potential.
Awareness-raising on a global-scale? This kid has got it all goin' on!
In her own way she is not just shining a light on Pakistan, but also all the countries that deny female children access to education.
Why not write to Lord Livingston, (he was appointed Minister of State for Trade and Investment on 11 December 2013 and leads on FCO relations with British Business. He is a Conservative member of the House of Lords.), and ask him what he thinks?
Or pressure your MP?
just a thought...
The bastard(s). You can see the nerve damage. she can only smile with the right side of her face.
Oct 13th, 2014 - 02:21 am - Link - Report abuse 0Wonderful young woman.
@7
Oct 13th, 2014 - 09:06 am - Link - Report abuse 0Actually no, we have strict laws on the UK about equality, honour based violence and forced marriage, we are well aware that muslim women are treated like crap and given no opportunities or equality in Pakistan and many other middle eastern countries, it's an absolute disgrace and it's been that way for thousands of years.
They are the people that need to hear, listen and act on this message. We all know what white British people get accused of when we stick our noses in other peoples affairs and tell them how they should live their lives and how they should behave and how they should adjust their values to be more like ours.
We are told that we don't have an empire any more, we are neo-colonialists, we are racists, we are crusaders and before you know it we have become enemy.
We are the last people that should be hammering this message home in these places, but by the same token, we are also the last people that need to hear it.
I was all for the Iraq war and Afghanistan, but what I have seen in the last 20 years when these dictators and strict totalitarian regimes are toppled and we spend years “nation building” trying to bring them proper democracy and western values, all that we leave behind is complete anarchy for these maniacs like ISIL to fill the void.
Change needs to happen within.
Good to se intelligent posters like Britworker agree with what I have being saying for months.
Oct 13th, 2014 - 02:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Malala!! your smile is SOOOOOO contagious!!! That you have me smiling right now!! Your speeches are so uplifting and docile that it appeases me that so many young people take you as their role model........
Oct 14th, 2014 - 12:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 0While it is heroic of someone so young yet determined to make a difference and she will in her lifetime. It's an utter shame that in this day and age that a female must fight for the right to an education.
Oct 14th, 2014 - 07:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@10
Oct 14th, 2014 - 09:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Ok. So what is your alternative suggestion? Stand by and do nothing? Hope it doesn't affect you?
Watch innocent children be shot in the face? Shrug and look away?
If you took the same attitude to apartheid then you disgust me.
To stand by and do nothing is to deny the legacy that your Gran Libertadores bequeathed you.
How disappointing. No wonder Argentina is a failing society if it does not produce people who are prepared to stand up for liberty and freedom for all.
Its none of your business to tell the Muslims how to treat their women.
Oct 14th, 2014 - 09:31 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Cd. I also suppose it was none if the world's business to tell Germany how to treat their jews.......in your mind right? Same thing.
Oct 14th, 2014 - 10:35 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well not many actually told the Germans how to treat the Jews.
Oct 14th, 2014 - 11:14 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The world reacted when Germany invaded Poland. The Holoucaust was known at the end of the war.
You are missing the point.....but you know that.
Oct 14th, 2014 - 11:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0No Pops, you are not getting the point; the Germans to this day are ashamed of what there grandparents did. Not because someone else came along from the UN or a foreign politically correct tax payer funded NGO and tell them what they did was wrong. They reflected upon their crimes and knew what they did was terribly shameful and evil.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 12:37 am - Link - Report abuse 0It wasnt a cultural nor religous mandate that made the German State clamp down on its Jewish folk like it is the case of the Muslim world against its women. It was a perticular time in history and episode where nationalism mixed up with the defeat of WWI and the greed and evil of one man that picked on a minority to place all the blames on. But the truth be said Jews had a long tradition and existance in German society as a minority.
That is completely different to milleniums of Islamic teaching and a cultural behaviour towards women.
Yes, Germany has developed a healthy degree of shame over what their grandparents generation did 75 years ago. The process by which they developed that shame is worth mentioning: Germans were required by the occupying powers to watch films made in the wake of the concentration camps being liberated.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 06:46 am - Link - Report abuse 0There was also considerable relief, and perhaps even gratitude that they were saved from both starvation and anarchy as well as, in the Western sectors, occupation from the U.S.S.R. I believe all of this made it easier to accept responsibility.
Both Britain and the U.S. were aware of the existence of concentration camps
long before the liberation of the camps, most notably through the efforts of Jan Karsky, but not the sheer scale of it, and the prominent American Jews in the Roosevelt administration, who met Karsky, had difficulty believing it could really be true. They were also unwilling to jeopardise the progress of acceptance of Jews in their own country by making further demands during a war.
#14
Oct 15th, 2014 - 09:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0By extrapolation, it's none of our business what anyone does as long as it is not to me ?
When Britain ruled India, it was the custom and practice for a widow to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. We interfered with this practice by banning it against the wishes of devout Hindus. Was this interference wrong ?
The rescinding of this ban did not happen when India wrote it's own constitution, so it must have been the correct thing to do.
Likewise in Fiji and some other Pacific Islands administered by Britain, cannibalism was rife partly due to religious beliefs. This was stopped and there does not seem to be a clamour to bring it back.
Some Muslims in the UK have taken part in “honour killings” when daughters have “strayed ” from Islamic teachings. We should ignore this as we should not tell Muslims what to do with “their” women.?
I think its a mute point.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 10:01 am - Link - Report abuse 0What are countries are sovereign for then??
Cultures and societies in the States wish to live by the rules and beliefs they hold important and established their own form of government.
I think I have always made certain that Muslims in westen countries should adopt and accept the local rule of law and customs. But if you are going to go to a sovereign country like Pakistan and tell them how they should behave and that they should live by your own standards, then you loose the right and the moral highground to complain when Pakistanies and Muslims go to the UK impose their own ways and establish sharia courts and gangs.
@20 Clyde
Oct 15th, 2014 - 10:11 am - Link - Report abuse 0Western countries have never exercised the same degree of power or influence over Muslim dominated countries like Iraq and Afghanistan as Britain did over India. They were there for a very long time.
Nobody likes being told what to believe and Muslims are no different. Meaningful changes with regard to the attitude of conservative or fundamental Sunni's towards women will only come when they believe it's right for them. In fact I believe it's quite possible that ISIS use of sex slavery is at least partly motivated by a desire to say to the west: “See, we can do what we like to 'our' women and there's nothing you can do about it!”.
Adopting western attitudes to women and gender equality would also mean adopting western hypocrisy to those same attitudes. Sex trafficking is rife in both Europe and the US and children have been rescued from brothels in my country. The fact that this allowed to happen at all is testament that enough people in our countries are OK with it to make it a profitable business.
I can't turn on the TV or walk down any major street in my country without being assailed with sexualised, frequently airbrushed images of women. Is it so surprising that so many girls as young as ten years old are developing eating disorders? And then there is the vast flood of hard-core porn, produced mostly in a small part of California, which has almost single-handedly convinced a significant proportion of adolescents and young men that women actually WANT to be roughly sodomised.
Yes, western armed forces can at least halt the progress of ISIS, and possibly stop the most barbaric treatment of the females under their power, but it can't remove what is in men's hearts. And it can' t stop it from emerging elsewhere - and what are we going to do then?
The UN should rid themselves of the Human Rights Counsel, unless they will be used only for financial “vulture funds”, assuming sovereign nations can do to it's people as they see fit. Also Argentina needs to release all those military dictators they've convicted and imprisoned. They had the sovereign right to drive those “green Ford Falcons” and toss citizens from helicopters.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 01:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@23
Oct 15th, 2014 - 03:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Those same military dictators were your allies in Central America up until the Falklands invasion. You've heard of Operation Charly I take it?
The principle of Self determination is about making your own choices as a free and sovereign nation. It also implies that countries and their peoples make mistakes and should live up to them that is also being a sovereing self governing nation. That it is what its all about.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 04:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Why did Milosevic end up in the Hague and Mugabe will die of old age in power?? The UN has no enforcement power its the winers and losers that is what sees the who ends up in court.
Argentina prosecuted and sentanced the dictators with its own courts.
Why would you say this or that to the Pakistanis, but have you even tried telling the Chinese to take a break on the clandestine detention centers, the brutal supression of Tibetans and Uighurs??
24. Touchè
One has nothing to do with the other........unless they touched your heart and left you speechless. But again you miss my meaning.....lost in translation. I am not speaking about other NATIONS.....I am pointing out what one person here is saying and that is:
Oct 15th, 2014 - 04:20 pm - Link - Report abuse 0A sovereign nation should do to it's people whatever they feel and if that is the case why chase the dictators? Shit happens.....right? Who cares about that anyway. lol
26.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 04:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well I certanly dont uphold the idea that dictators and leaders can do whatever they want. But it is up to their constituency to resolve the problem and stand for their rights, not someone else come from outside and solve it for them.
In this case it is something cultural and mass practised in Muslim countries (i.e trating women like shit) of course their states are aware of this but it something they agree too. Im sorry, but did anyone say to you ever that it is a perfect world ??
If it were I would never had served in the Army. I've seen a lot of that imperfection up close and even practiced it at times. As long as I am breathing. I will act and speak up if I human feces like the taliban, ISIL and nazis spreading. You do not have to.......you have that luxury as an Argentine. It's your right to do nothing. I see you turning you head and walking faster if you passed a woman being raped......but again. Your free will.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 05:53 pm - Link - Report abuse 0http://nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-long-history-of-harvesting-organs-from-living-political-prisoners/
Oct 15th, 2014 - 08:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0http://nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-long-history-of-harvesting-organs-from-living-political-prisoners/
http://nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-long-history-of-harvesting-organs-from-living-political-prisoners/
Its the second largest economy in the world this year expected to overtake the US. They are by far the most brutal regime in the world yet everybody around the world trades with them. Your own computer from which you are reading this and from where these comments are made from was manufactured by them.
Why dont you go and fight them ??
Why does the Netherlands and Scotland boycott Israels avocados, oranges and tomatoes but dare not boycott China??
Why ISIL and not Boko Haram, Sèleka, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb??
Is that question for me? I am no longer military and military does not get to choose their wars. Perhaps some parts were made in China. But not the computer. Btw. Not everything the military does is in the news....or more would be said abot SA.and CA.
Oct 15th, 2014 - 10:26 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Surely the same question regarding China. Why don't you go and fight them? Applies equally to the oppression of girls? Both situations are wrong. Should we then ignore both? And corruption and despotic behaviour in, oh I don't know, Venezuela perhaps?
Oct 16th, 2014 - 10:14 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I have no problem with people pointing out Western hypocrisy in regards to China, but it is just confusing the earlier, interesting debate.
Which was, is it ok to look the other way when you feel a massive injustice is being forced on part of the community?
Some say, well CD2 says, it is a matter of cultural relativism, others, myself included, say it is wrong not to act.
The rights of female children to have access to education was what sparked this debate.
Well, is it a “universal human right” or not? Debate that!
Oh, and let us not forget. It is due in no small way, that thanks to that lovely, brave, smart Muslim Pakistani GIRL, that we global commentators are even having this conversation.
Blessings be upon her, she is already on her way to achieving her goal.
@31
Oct 17th, 2014 - 03:02 am - Link - Report abuse 0Ilsen, my government has tolerating what has been described as a “slow motion genocide” in West Papua for more than 50 years now. The process by which Indonesia came to occupy it is a shameful one in which my country is complicit.
Many of the atrocities committed by ISIS have also been committed by the Indonesian military -including rape and torture. Most recently our PM pledged to the Indonesian leader to: “...do everything that we possibly can to discourage and prevent” people from using Australia “as a platform for grandstanding against Indonesia”.
Our soldiers have done enough in Afghanistan and Iraq IMO and have just been offered an insulting pay increase. My PM is a hypocrite.
The various countries that are contributing to the conflict against ISIS are not doing so because of their treatment of females - it was the beheadings that changed public opinion in the US.
That said, I like your statements regarding Malala which I found rather moving. Well said.
Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!