2 মন্তব্য

• Cindi, 19 October, 2022 03:56 AM

  Since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban at 15 in rural northwest Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai has become a global figure promoting education for girls A firebrand Pakistani scholar has been detained for making death threats against Nobel prize laureate Malala Yousafzai over her comments on marriage, officials said Friday. Since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban at aged 15 in rural northwest Pakistan, the Oxford graduate has become a global figure promoting education for girls. But a recent interview with the fashion magazine Vogue stirred debate in her home country -- where she is already a divisive figure -- when she questioned whether a legal union between a couple was necessary. The issue was debated by MPs in her home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who said her comments were against Islam. "Malala is dreaming to become the country's prime minister but promoting obscenity," cleric Sardar Ali told students of a local seminary in the northwestern city of Lakki Marwat last week. He added that he would blow her up in a suicide attack if she returned. Police official Wasim Sajjad told AFP Sardar Ali had been charged with making threats, hate speech, and inciting terrorism. The arrest was confirmed by a second senior police official, Muhammad Imran. Last year Yousafzai called out Prime Minister Imran Khan on Twitter, after a Taliban militant who claimed to have been behind her attack escaped from detention. She appeared on the front cover of the British edition of Vogue magazine last week dressed in a full-length designer gown and head scarf. "If you want to have a person in your life, why do you have to sign marriage papers, why can't it just be a partnership?" she asked, in an interview where she said she was still deciding what to do after finishing her degree. Though celebrated in many quarters, Yousafzai has received backlash in Pakistan over the years, where some say global attention on the attempt on her life has given the country a bad reputation. She is also criticised for her perceived championing of Western liberal values, and has faced constant scrutiny over her clothing and views on world affairs. Rāipur Bangladesh

• Demetrius, 17 October, 2022 02:42 AM

  MADRID, Oct 10 (Reuters) - A group representing victims of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's regime has asked prosecutors to investigate a song performed at a rally by the far-right Vox party for allegedly calling for a return to civil war. The song, written by youtuber Isaac Parejo and performed with the band Los Meconios, starts with the line "We're going back to '36", a reference to the year Spain's civil war began and a suggestion Spain's Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory said could be akin to a hate crime. The war started in July 1936 when Franco and other rebel officers launched an unsuccessful coup against the elected government of the Second Republic that escalated into a three-year conflict with about 500,000 casualties. "The Attorney General's office should investigate and the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory should file a hate crime complaint," the association tweeted on Sunday in reference to a video of the concert at Vox's annual "Viva" event. The state prosecutor's office and the ministry in charge of democratic memory declined to comment. The lyrics include verses such as "we are 'fachas'" - a slang term for "fascist" - and comparisons between Spain's current centre-left coalition government and the Popular Front that held power in the lead-up to the civil war. The performers said on social media the song was a parody and had been misinterpreted. "That sentence ... doesn't mean that we want to go back to '36, it means that they want to take us back to '36," Parejo said in a video on Twitter, referring to what he described as the "single-brain-cell Left". Several politicians linked to right-wing populist movements sent video messages supporting Vox at the event, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italy's Giorgia Meloni. Since its founding in 2013, Vox has grown to become the third largest party in the lower house, currently holding 52 of 350 seats. It is also a junior partner in the regional government of Castille and Leon led by the conservative Popular Party. (Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Aislinn Laing and Nick Macfie) Ningyang China - hbl.gcc.edu -