Islamabad, May 12 (IANS) A senior Canadian educationist, accused of being an enemy of Islam, left Pakistan after receiving death threats, a media report said here on Tuesday.
Bernadette L. Dean, served as principal of St. Joseph’s College for Women, Karachi, principal of Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, and as a professor at the Aga Khan University, Dawn online reported.
Dean, in an email sent to her friends and colleagues first said ‘sorry’ that she had not been able to contact them in recent days and then described reasons for that. She said she had to leave Pakistan fearing for her life on the advice of family, friends, colleagues and police.
She said a political party was instrumental in unleashing a “hate campaign” against her for writing textbooks as a member of the government-appointed advisory committee for curriculum.
“This campaign started a few months ago with threatening phone calls to members of the advisory committee on curriculum and textbook reform and Sindh Textbook Board, to complain about me and the work I am doing with respect to textbook writing, a vicious letter accusing me of being a foreigner woman who has single-handedly made changes to the curriculum and textbooks that made them secular and called me an enemy of Islam,” she wrote.
With her email, she also attached multiple files. One of them included a letter to the Karachi police chief from a civil society organisation appealing for the removal of banners put up by the political party against her.