A recent attack on a female teacher at a girls’ school in Pakistan has renewed calls for better security for educators and students in the country.
On March 26, the teacher, Shahnaz Nazli, 41, was shot dead while she was on her way to the school where she worked in Shahkas, the volatile tribal belt on the Afghan border, a local government official, Asmatullah Wazir, told Agence France Presse.
The shooting death was compared to the Taliban’s attack last October on a Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai. The teenager received medical care in Britain and recently resumed her studies there.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the killing of Ms. Nazli as well as previous violence targeting other teachers and institutions.
But after the attack on Ms. Nazli, at least two more incidents were reported at Pakistani schools over the weekend. On Saturday, a principal, Abdul Rasheed, was killed in a grenade attack on his school in Karachi, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Parents pulled their sons and daughters from the school, Dawn said in a separate report.
A girls’ school was blown up on Sunday in Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, a report by Pakistan’s Express Tribune said on Monday. The newspaper did not report any injuries.
In an echo of the reaction to the attack on Ms. Yousafzai, the death of Ms. Nazli spawned an online response on Twitter. News of the attack circulated via the hashtags #Courage2Teach and #girlseducation, and an online petition was created to demand that more be done to protect students and education officials.
Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister who was named the United Nations’ special envoy for Global Education, called on the Pakistani government in a statement last week to provide further protections.
The petition started by his office after the shooting of Ms. Nazli said: “Mourning the death of Shahnaz Nazli, a courageous teacher shot for wanting to ensure girls have the right to go to school, we call on the president and government of Pakistan to end the killings and violence that prevent girls’ education and to ensure all girls can go to school. We call for all girls and all teachers to be protected and given security to enable them to enjoy their basic right to be educated.â€
Mr. Brown wrote on his Web site:
The petition is timely and necessary. This week’s shooting is unfortunately not an isolated incident but a sharp reminder of how a basic right, for girls to go to school, is still being resisted violently by extremist militants. For as I have traveled the world visiting not just Asia but Africa too, I have learned how girls â€" and teachers whose only crime is helping young girls reach their potential through the right to education â€" have been threatened, intimidated and, in some cases, kidnapped, imprisoned, bombed and maimed.
Mr. Brown told the BBC Asian Network in an audio interview last week that not having an education was a “silent emergency†because the damage it did to children was not immediately visible.
CNN coverage of the attack on Mrs. Nazli showed her family in mourning and an interview with her young son, who was with his mother when she was attacked.
Human rights and other organizations said the government needed to do more to protect schools. Human Rights Watch has said there were 96 documented attacks on schools in 2012, most of them in the tribal areas.
Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.
