Pakistan: Attacks on schools and teachers now occurring daily | WPN World People News

A head teacher was murdered this morning in Pakistan - and three school children are fighting for their lives with another three badly injured - after the latest attack on a school and on the right of girls to education.

As pupils gathered early on Saturday to receive exam results, grenades were hurled into the Baldia Town school causing carnage. The Principal, Abdur Rasheed, died on the spot. The perpetrators are thought to be from TPP, a Taliban terrorist sect, as their campaign of violence against girls’ education moves from the tribal areas into one of the country’s largest cities, Karachi.

The latest attack follows the murder earlier this week, in the Khyber tribal district, of Shahnaz Nazli, a 41 year old teacher gunned down in front of one of her children, only 200 meters from the all-girls school where she taught.

But this time the wave of terror attacks - orchestrated by opponents of girls’ education - is provoking a domestic and international response, a groundswell of public revulsion similar to that which followed the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, who also was shot at simply for wanting girls to go to school.

“We will not ever be intimidated by extremists, not in Pakistan and not anywhere else where we are fighting to accomplish that right which is still denied to 32 million girls worldwide,” EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen said.

Sign Petition

Education International calls upon its membership to sign the petition which is now available on http://educationenvoy.org/ calling for a cessation of violence against teachers who are defending the right of girls to go to school.

The petition and the memorial signal a fight back against attempts to ban girls’ education and come in the wake of the intervention of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who, in a special communique, has spoken out against the shooting of Shahnaz and given his personal support to teachers persecuted for their advocacy of girls’ education.

This week’s attacks are a stark reminder to the world of the persistence of threats, intimidation, shootings, arson attacks and sometimes even murder that are the Taliban’s weapons in a war against girls’ opportunity.

Last October, shocked by the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, and pressured by a petition signed by three million people, the Pakistani government agreed for the first time to legislate compulsory free education and provided stipends for three million children. Now authorities in Pakistan are under international pressure to deploy their security services to ensure the safety and protection of teachers and girls trying to go to school.

Source: Education International