Taking Action on Violence Against Women in Pakistan!

Women’s university in Pakistan shut after deadly attacks

Quetta’s Sardar Bahadur Khan University has been closed indefinitely after the all-female educational institution suffered deadly twin attacks on Saturday.

“No classes were being taken nor students were visiting university after the Saturday attack,” a statement from the university said on Monday.

The closure is seen as a safety precaution, as the Pakistani city has seen many attacks. In Saturday’s first incident, a bomb on a university bus killed 14 women. Gunmen then killed 11 other women when they attacked the hospital treating those wounded in the initial attack.

PanARMENIAN.Net – The women’s university at the center of a deadly twin attacks in the Pakistani city of Quetta has been shut down until further notice, BBC News reported.

In the first incident a bomb on a university bus killed 14 women. Gunmen then killed 11 when they laid siege to the hospital treating the wounded.

Sardar Bahadur Khan University is the only all-female university in troubled Balochistan province. The move is seen as a safety precaution in a city which has seen many attacks.

The site of the five-hour gun battle that unfolded after the bus bombing, the sprawling Bolan Medical Complex in Quetta, has also been closed indefinitely. An extremist Sunni group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has said it carried out both attacks. A spokesperson for the group said a female suicide bomber had been used to target the university students.

Although police now say they have found the severed head of a woman from the scene, they say the investigation is continuing to see if this really was a suicide attack.

On Sunday, June 16, Quetta observed an official day of mourning but Monday saw yet more groups, such as the Balochistan Bar Association, declare a strike to mourn the attacks.

Saturday’s bloodshed began when a bomb exploded on a bus carrying students at Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University. When survivors were brought to the medical centre, militants stormed the building and started shooting indiscriminately. The battle between the militants and security forces left nurses, security personnel and a senior city official among the dead. Four attackers were also killed and one arrested, officials say.

Quetta, a city of 900,000 people in the south-west of the country, has long been troubled by violence mainly targeting the Shia Muslim minority, often claimed by groups such as Laskar-e-Jhangvi.

In January at least 81 people, mainly Shia Muslims, were killed in a bomb attack on a snooker hall in the city. And in February almost 90 died when a bomb ripped through a marketplace in a Hazara Shia part of the city.

SECRETARY-GENERAL CONDEMNS TERRORIST ATTACKS IN PAKISTAN AGAINST WOMEN

EDUCATORS, STUDENTS, CALLING GOVERNMENT TO APPREHEND PERPETRATORS

The following statement was issued on 15 June by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:

The Secretary-General strongly condemns the attacks today in Quetta and Ziarat, Pakistan, in which at least 20 civilians were reportedly killed and many more injured.

He deplores the heinous nature of the attacks on a university bus carrying women students and educators and a hospital facility, as well as the heritage Quaid Azam Residency which has a historical importance as a former home of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. No cause can justify such violence.

The Secretary-General notes with dismay that violence against women and educators has increased in recent years, the aim being to keep girls from attaining the basic right to education.

The Secretary-General sends his condolences to the victims, their families, and the Government of Pakistan. He calls on the Government to do all possible to bring the perpetrators to justice. He expresses the unstinting solidarity of the United Nations in the face of continued terrorist violence in Pakistan.

UN envoy and young Pakistani activist launch drive for safe, universal education

A 15-year-old Pakistani girl targeted by assassins – Malala Yousafzai – is the first signatory of a new worldwide petition calling for urgent action to ensure the right of every child to safely attend school, launched today with the backing of the United Nations Special Envoy for Education.

The launch came in the wake of an attack that killed 14 students at an all girls’ college in Pakistan, emphasized Special Envoy Gordon Brown, in an op-ed published today in the Huffington Post.

“This, the bloodiest atrocity yet in escalating violence against female students, comes eight months after the attempted assassination of Malala and her two friends, Kainat and Shazia, targeted by terrorists just because they wanted to go to school,” Mr. Brown wrote.

“That is why today, in advance of Malala Day on July 12, we are launching our worldwide petition to demand that global leaders ensure 57 million out-of-school girls and boys are given the chance of education,” he said.

Ms. Yousafzai’s appearance at UN Headquarters on 12 July will mark her first major public speech since she was shot last October. She will be joined at the UN by hundreds of young people from around the world.

The petition and the UN event are part of an effort to establish universal primary education by December 2015, the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, a set of anti-poverty targets set by UN Member States in a 2000 summit.

In a statement issued for the petition launch, Ms. Yousafzai said that the terrorists in the attack on the girls’ school, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned over the weekend, were “cowards.”

“The innocent girls who died on Saturday have nothing to do with politics and only wanted to empower themselves through education. Obtaining education is every man and woman’s birth right and no one is allowed to take away this right from them,” she stressed.”

Mr. Brown and Ms. Yousafzai are supporting the initiative of Secretary-General Ban to accelerate progress towards the UN Global Education First Initiative to put every child in school, improve the quality of learning, and foster global citizenship by the end of 2015.