Malai Joya … I salute you!!!
Five assassination attempts have failed to silence a woman determined to defend Afghans from warlords, drug lords and the Taliban
It is a year since I last saw Malalai Joya. She was at Stansted airport preparing to return to Afghanistan: a tiny figure clutching a large holdall and a gold-coloured trophy. It was the Anna Politkovskaya Award for human rights campaigning and Ms Joya was the second recipient. Some might say the trophy brings with it a curse. It was created in memory of the Russian journalist gunned down outside her Moscow apartment in 2006. The first recipient, Natalya Estimerova, was murdered last week in the Chechen capital. As Ms Estimerova passed on the trophy to her in 2008, her message was blunt: “Malalai, be brave.”