LAHORE: Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai faced a backlash in her native Pakistan on Wednesday after the premiere of a Broadway musical she co-produced with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The musical, titled “Suffus,” has been playing in New York since last week and depicts the American women’s suffrage movement in the 20th century.
But Mr. Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has been criticized by some for aligning himself with Mr. Clinton, an outspoken supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Pakistan has seen a number of violent and emotional pro-Palestinian protests since the Gaza war began last October.
Popular Pakistani columnist Meer Tarar said, “Theatrical collaboration with Hillary Clinton, which expresses clear US support for the genocide of Palestinians, is a major blow to her credibility as a human rights activist.” Written on social media platform X.
“I think that’s absolutely tragic.”
Although Clinton supported military operations to eliminate Hamas and rejected calls for a ceasefire, she also explicitly called for protections for Palestinian civilians.
Yousafzai publicly condemned the civilian casualties and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The New York Times reported that the 26-year-old wore a red and black pin to show her support for the ceasefire during the Safs last Thursday.
But author and academic Nida Kirmani told X that Yousafzai’s decision to team up with Clinton was “both infuriating and heartbreaking.” Totally disappointing. ”
At least 34,262 people have been killed in the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run autonomous region’s health ministry.
The war began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that killed about 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli officials.
Clinton served as America’s top diplomat under former President Barack Obama, overseeing a drone strike campaign targeting Taliban insurgents on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 while promoting girls’ education as a teenager, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, the drone war left scores of civilians dead and seriously injured in Yousafzai’s hometown, prompting more online criticism of the youngest Nobel laureate, who won the award at the age of 17.
Yousafzai is often viewed with suspicion in Pakistan, where critics accuse her of imposing a Western feminist and liberal political agenda on the conservative country.
