A child standing in front of his ground-flattened school after a bombardment in Ainjara village in rural Aleppo, Syria. Photo: UNICEF/Khalil Alshawi
In an impassioned plea, Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai has urged safe passage for people trapped in Aleppo, praying for safety of children in the war-shattered city, where pro-Assad regime militias are butchering civilians.
“Today I feel as though I’m watching the worst of our past repeat itself,” Yousafzai said in a statement posted on her Facebook page.
“When I look at Syria, I see the Rwandan genocide. When I read the desperate words of Bana Alabed in Aleppo, I see Anne Frank in Amsterdam,” she noted in a painful comparison with some of the worst massacres of recent history.
The youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner’s statement was also an indictment of the international community, which in the past more than five years has watched the Syrians die in the multi-layered conflict that began with Bashar al Assad regime’s killing of Arab Spring demonstrators in 2011. Since then, Syrian civilians have suffered at the hands of both Assad’s state terror and horrible attacks inflicted by terrorist outfits like ISIS, with estimates putting the death toll at half a million people. Millions more have fled the country and become refugees.
The last few days have particularly seen Iranian-backed militias target civilians in Aleppo after routing rebels fighting the Syrian regime, with reports saying several women and children are among the victims of their barbarity. Images of people trying to leave the city in a large exodus and coming under Syrian regime’s aerial bombardment and militia attacks have outraged human rights advocates around the world.
Malala Yousafzai, who lived through the horrors of the Taliban terror in her hometown Swat and survived an attempt on her life in 2012, now symbolizes aspirations for children’s rights to education, especially the young girls, who are denied access to education due to a variety of reasons in the developing and impoverished countries.
“History shows us the same children suffering, the ones we always say we surely would have helped, if only we had been there. But history does not fall from the sky, it is us who make it,” the 19-year-old activist said.
The Syrian war has seen seen a large number of children die even as regional countries backing rebels and world powers have engaged in disparate campaigns and ineffective diplomatic efforts to save the country from total annihilation at the hands of Russia-backed Bashar al Assad and militant groups fighting at several places.
“To the children under siege in Aleppo, I pray that you will get out safely. I pray that you will grow up strong, go to school and see peace in your country some day.
“But prayers are not enough. We must act. The international community must do everything they can to end to this inhumane war. The Syrian regime must give safe passage to people who want to leave and allow aid workers into Aleppo to save as many lives as they can.
“May God be with the children of Aleppo, even if our world leaders are not,” she prayed at the end of her statement.
