30 March 2018 - Malala Yousafzai Returns to Pakistan for First Time Since Shooting
'Happiest day of my life': Malala returns to Pakistan for first time since Taliban shooting
Michael Safi (The Guardian, 29/03/2018)
Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel laureate and activist for girls’ education, has made an emotional return to Pakistan for the first time since she was shot in the head nearly six years ago in a Taliban assassination attempt.
Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel prize winner, arrived on Thursday in the capital Islamabad with her father and younger brother, meeting the prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, before giving a speech on national television.
“I am very happy that, after five-and-a-half years, I have set foot on the soil of my nation again,” she said, wiping away tears. “Today is the happiest day of my life, because I have returned to my country; I have stepped foot on my nation’s soil again and am among my own people.”
Malala Yousafzai, world’s youngest Nobel laureate, returns home to Pakistan
Shaiq Hussain (The Washington Post, 29/03/2018)
Malala Yousafzai, the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, returned to Pakistan on Thursday for the first time since Taliban militants shot her in the head more than five years ago for fighting for the right of girls to go to school.
Yousafzai was flown to Britain in 2012 for medical care and then impressed the world with her eloquent defense of the rights of girls and women. She went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, along with Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, before being accepted to Oxford University.
While she has been hailed by supporters as a champion against extremism, some Islamist hard-liners in Pakistan and elsewhere have criticized Yousafzai, calling her a mouthpiece for Western cultural views.
Malala Yousafzai’s homecoming
Editorial (The Indian Express, 30/03/2018)
God willing, I will return to Pakistan soon,” Malala Yousafzai had said in an interview after becoming the youngest Nobel Prize winner in 2014. Many in her country poured scorn at these sentiments, then. “We hate Malala Yousafzai, a CIA agent,” one Facebook page reacted. It’s a measure of how much things have changed in Pakistan in four years that social media has gone abuzz welcoming Malala back home. On Thursday, the country’s twitterati stayed up well past midnight to “welcome our very own Nobel laureate & the brave and brainy daughter of the soil”. “If it were up to me, I would have never left the country,” the 20-year-old woman responded.
Malala Yousafzai Makes Emotional Return To Pakistan 6 Years After Assassination Attempt
Alanna Vagianos (The Huffington Post, 29/03/2018)
Malala Yousafzai returned to her home country of Pakistan for the first time since the Taliban attempted to assassinate her in 2012.
The girls’ education activist landed in Pakistan early Thursday morning with her brother and father. The 20-year-old Nobel Prize laureate met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in Islamabad where Abbasi and other government officials honored Yousafzai during a small ceremony.
“Welcome home,” Abbasi told Yousafzai during a press conference, Reuters reported. “We are very happy that our daughter has come back. When she went away, she was a child of 12. She has returned as the most prominent citizen of Pakistan.”