Pak Taliban shoots another human rights campaigner

Malala Yousufzai

Lots of coverage yesterday about the shooting of Malala Yousufzai, the Swati schoolgirl from Mingora who took on the Taliban in her blog writings. Even Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani went to visit her in hospital. All very commendable, but contrast that to the near-total silence that greeted the killing of Farida Afridi in July (see my report here). She was shot dead in cold blood as she drove to Jamrud in Khyber Agency where she ran Sawera, a human rights organisation working in FATA to improve the rights of women in the region. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has a policy of killing human rights workers and for most of the time no-one - least of all Imran Khan - questions this.