Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician who has been called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”. As an elected member of the Wolesi Jirga from Farah province, she has publicly denounced the presence of what she considers warlords and war criminals in the parliament. She is an outspoken critic of both the Taliban as well as the present Afghan government of Karzai and its western supporters. The BBC has called Joya “the most famous woman in Afghanistan”. On May 07, 2006, Malalai Joya was physically and verbally attacked by fellow members of parliament after accusing several colleagues of being 'warlords' and unfit for service in the new Afghan government. On June 21, 2007, Joya supporters in Melbourne staged protests to the Afghan government to reinstate Joya to the parliament. In November 2007, an international letter with a number of prominent signatories supporting the call for her reinstatement to parliament. Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children as best as she could. The attempts to murder her began with a sniper and have not stopped ever since. Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women and get back in the fight. Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between who are opposed. Where does her courage come from? Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. She has written a memoir with Canadian writer Derrick O'Keefe under the title of “Raising My Voice”. 

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/malalai-joya-the-woman-who-will-not-be-silenced-1763127.html

Photo from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Malalai_Joya_speaking_in_Finland.jpg