Thursday, January 15, 2009

Acid Attack Fails

From the News & Observer:
"One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside Shamsia on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

"Are you going to school?"

Then the man pulled Shamsia's burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia's eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others -- students and teachers -- was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well -- about 1,300 in all."


Continue to read the rest of the story of these amazing young women and their fight for education.

No comments: