Meanwhile, in Peshawar – there was going to be an event to launch Malala Yousafzai’s book today, but it got canceled because some bullies demanded that it should be.

The book launch had been organised by Peshawar University’s Area Study Centre in collaboration with the Bacha Khan Education Trust (BKET), a non-profit education network set up by the secular Pashtun ANP party, and a civil society NGO called Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO).

Dr Hussain of BKET said that police had informed organisers they could not provide security for the programme. But he added that political pressure had also been put on the university administration to suspend the event.

“Two ministers of the KP government put pressure on the university administration to call off the programme. Some important state functionaries also made telephone calls to senior professors of the Area Study Centre,” he told BBC Urdu.

Peshawar’s police chief Ijaz Khan told the BBC that the book launch was stopped “due to security concerns”.

He added that the centre had not provided any information to the police about the programme, which meant that arranging security in such a short time was not possible.

“Also, the university administration itself had voiced some reservations over Area Study Centre’s plans for the book launch, after which permission for the programme was withheld,” he said.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shah Farman told the AFP news agency that the local government had indeed halted the ceremony.

“It is true that we stopped them and there were many reasons for that.”

All of them bad.