Class Dismissed in Swat Valley: The Death of Female Education (video by Adam Ellick and Irfan Ashraf for the New York Times)
A short documentary profiling an 11-year-old Pakistani girl on the last day before the Taliban close down her school.
In the course of this moving video, a young girl, her face veiled to conceal her identity, bravely reads the following speech at a school rally:
"Swat Valley: the land of waterfalls. Lush green hills and other gifts bestowed upon it by the nature. But my dear friends, today Swat has in the past few years become a heartland for Pakistan Islamic militancy. Today, this idyllic valley of peace is burning. Why the peace of this valley is destroyed? Why our future is targeted? Schools are not places of learning but places of fear and violence. Our dreams are shattered. And let me say, we are destroyed."
But see also:
Who are the "Taliban" in Swat? by Humeira Iqtidar (Open Democracy, April 30, 2009)
"Much media attention has focused on the worsening plight of women in Swat, particularly after the video-taped public flogging of a 17 year-old girl. Unfortunately, the kinds of atrocities perpetrated by the TNSM against women also occur in the feudal holdings of many of the "secular" political elite of Pakistan. Yet these incidents do not make headlines in the same way. Few Pakistanis can ignore the fact that restricting women's mobility and reducing their educational opportunities (as the TNSM intend to do) along with gang rape, abduction, and honour killing have a long history in southern Punjab and Sind, areas where both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani have vast landholdings."
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