Pakistani teen pleads for release of Nigerian girls

ABUJA, Nigeria – The Pakistani teen who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012 marked her 17th birthday Monday with a visit to Nigeria and urged Islamic extremists to free the 219 schoolgirls who were kidnapped there, calling them her “sisters.”

Malala Yousafzai, who has become an international symbol for women’s rights in the face of hard-line Islam, said Nigeria’s president promised to meet for the first time with the abducted girls’ parents.

“My birthday wish this year is ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ now and alive,” she said, using the social media slogan that has been picked up around the world to demand freedom for the girls, who were abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram in April from a school in the remote northeast Nigerian town of Chibok.

Yousafzai appealed directly to their captors as she held hands with some of the girls who escaped.

“Lay down your weapons. Release your sisters. Release my sisters. Release the daughters of this nation. Let them be free. They have committed no crime.”

She added: “You are misusing the name of Islam … Islam is a religion of peace.”

Yousafzai also spoke against the custom of child brides in her home country, a tradition common in Nigeria, too. Boko Haram has threatened to sell some of the girls as brides if its fighters are not freed.

“Protect girls from cruelty,” she said in a speech, explaining that girls should not be forced to marry or to leave school to become brides “when they should be girls,” or to give birth to children “when they themselves are children.”

Boko Haram attacks continued over the weekend with witnesses blaming the group for the bombing of a major bridge on a northeast Nigerian highway that further limits access to its base camps in the Sambisa Forest, where it is believed to be holding some of the girls.

Gunmen destroyed most of the bridge on the road between Maiduguri and Biu on Saturday night, making it impossible for vehicles to cross, the spokesman for the Nigerian Vigilante Group, Abbas Gava, told the Associated Press.

Yousafzai met Monday with Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan and told reporters that the president “promised me that the girls will be returned as soon as possible.”

She described an emotional meeting Sunday with some of the girls’ parents.

“I could see tears in their eyes,” she said, and they were asking if they could meet the president.

Jonathan has not met with any of the parents, though some regularly make the dangerous drive from Chibok to join activists who have held daily rallies in Abuja.

When the activists tried to march peacefully to the presidential villa in May, they were blocked by soldiers and police. Jonathan canceled a planned trip to Chibok that same month.

On Monday, he told Yousafzai that criticism that his government is not doing enough is “wrong and misplaced,” according to a presidential statement.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau put out a video Sunday in which he repeated demands that the government release detained insurgents in exchange for the girls’ freedom.

Jonathan so far has refused, despite pleas from the parents.