The Guardian has more detail on the suppression of Malala’s book launch.
Malala Yousafzai’s book was due to be launched at an event on Monday at Peshawar University but organisers were forced to scrap it after the intervention of two senior members of the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KP).
The episode underlines the antipathy among many Pakistanis towards the 16-year-old who campaigned for education in the face of Taliban opposition.
While she has been hailed in the west for her campaign against extremism, in Pakistan she is widely regarded with suspicion, with many people believing conspiracy theories that the story of the Taliban attempt to assassinate her as she travelled to school in October 2012 was untrue or exaggerated.
Well of course there’s antipathy among many Pakistanis. Many Pakistanis are very conservative and theocratic.
The event that was to have been held at the university’s Central Asia Area Study Centre had been intended to raise awareness of a book which is not widely available in Pakistan.
Few booksellers dare stock it after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is particularly strong in KP, threatened to attack shops selling copies of I Am Malala.
Organisers said they came under enormous pressure to abandon the event, with ministers, the police and university officials all intervening.
“They all made so many excuses,” said Khadim Hussain, director of the Baacha Khan Education Foundation and one of the organisers. “First they said it was a security risk, then they said the book was not relevant to the study centre.”
He said opponents of the book launch simply wanted to please the Taliban.
And cheer them up over their failure to kill Malala. Poor Taliban.