KARACHI: They may have been talking via video link from Birmingham and New Delhi on Saturday, but the warmth with which Malala Yousufzai and Kailash Satyarthi waxed eloquent on the issues pertaining to children and their education made the audience in the Arts Council Karachi auditorium feel as if the two Nobel laureates were sitting among them.

The event, organised by the Citizens for Democracy (CFD) in collaboration with the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi, had some other important guests as well. They were survivors of different acts of extremism in Pakistan. They included Mehreen Kausar of the Hazara community whose mother and sister lost their lives in a bomb blast; Mujtaba Hasan, the brother of the late Aitzaz Hasan who sacrificed his life to save his fellow schoolchildren in Hangu; Mohammad Tufail Khatak, whose older son protected the life of his younger brother Ahmed Ali Shah in the Peshawar Army Public School (APS) tragedy; and the young Mohammad Talha, who received three bullets, one in his jaw, when the terrorists attacked the APS.

Acknowledging the presence at the event of the survivors of terrorist attacks, Malala said they were a courageous lot and she wholeheartedly supported them. She said it’s time we promised to ourselves that we won’t let incidents like the one that took place in Peshawar happen again. Every child, she said, had the right to education. She asked everyone to keep raising their voice in favour of education because their voice was more powerful than the sound of blazing guns. She was certain that their voice would bring about the required change in society.

Referring to the fund that she’s set up to help educate children, Malala said it was one thing to advocate for a noble cause but another to work for it. She said we ourselves had to work towards our goals.

Replying to a question asked by a member of the audience about her return to Pakistan, Malala said she loved Pakistan and the people of Pakistan loved her. She would come back to her country once she was finished with her studies. She clarified she had no interest in politics but wanted to serve the people of the country.

In response to a question about how meeting world leaders had changed her as a person, she said she was the same person but meeting political leaders of different countries helped her understand the system they worked in. Answering the query on some of the negative comments about her on the social media, she said she was aware of them, and since they carried no weight, they were unjustified; and when she received so much love from millions of other people, negative comments meant nothing to her.

Kailash Satyarthi started off his speech by saying that those who survived the Peshawar attack were very brave and he felt strongly for them. He said he had worked in 140 countries of the world for the betterment of children and had even visited Sialkot and Lahore for the purpose. There was no surprise that the ones who enslaved children and reaped benefits out of it did not like him. He and his co-workers had often been attacked, as a result of which he lost two of his colleagues and got himself hurt. He said there’s no greater force than freedom.

Kailash said what happened in Peshawar was a dark chapter in our history; we needed to make sure that our children were safe and free. He narrated that when a journalist sought his comments on the Peshawar incident he replied he wished that the terrorists got hold of him and left the children alone. He said he’d like to come and work in Pakistan because Pakistan’s children too were his children.

Mujtaba Ahsan, Muhammad Tufail, Mahreen Kausar also spoke. Mementos were given to all the participants in the programme.

Earlier eminent artist Zia Mohyeddin recited two poems which he said were relevant to the subject. The first was Fiza Azmi’s ‘Vaiz-i-Zamana Saaz’ and the other was Prasoon Joshi’s poem on the Peshawar attack.

The event was conducted by Wusutullah Khan.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2015

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