Children have never been so vulnerable...
Children are the most precious persons to their parents.
The massacre of the 130 school children by the Taliban in Pakistan is just too shocking, and painful. Nothing could be more devastating and heartbreaking than watching innocent children being slaughtered in a cold-blooded manner. Children are the most precious persons to their parents who don’t stop watching the clock until they see them back from school. My heart goes out to the distraught parents who sent their children to school in uniforms and found them in caskets hours later.
The fact that the terrorists burst into the school and started shooting the pupils with intent to kill proves that they dislike schools, students and teachers. One of the ways to counter these terrorists is to open more schools in their areas of influence. Malala Yousufzai, the teenager Nobel laureate who herself had been shot for speaking up against them, was wise enough to start a campaign for the education of children. Because only educated youth can pose a challenge to the reign of terror of these illiterate and ignorant people.
The saddest part of the story is that there are many extremist religious groups that sympathise with the Taliban and justify their barbaric ways and shed crocodile tears when any such attack takes place. Many others are just carried away by the religious terms and slogans that the terrorists use to advance their agenda of establishing a barbaric state that they call “Islamic state” thus tarnishing the image of a religion, which commands their followers not to harm children, women and forbid them even to cut down green trees. Innocent children have never been so vulnerable.
- The reader is an Indian procurement officer based in Abu Dhabi.
