Synopsis
Balochistan is Pakistan€s largest province rich with natural gas, gold and copper. Located on the borders of Iran and Afghanistan, land of the Balochs, where the first Baloch confederacy was founded in 1666, has had a bitter history of exploitation and suppression by a strictly centralized federal government heavily influenced by the country€s military.While the central government and the province confronted each other four times since the forceful annexation of the Baloch land into Pakistan in 1948, the ongoing movement entails more systematic and radical dimensions. Malik Siraj Akbar, editor of the The Baloch Hal, the first online English newspaper of Balochistan, takes a look at the last one decade how the dimensions of the Baloch movement changed.A Hubert Humphrey Fellow at Arizona State University€s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Malik reveals the €œenforced disappearance€ of hundreds of Baloch political workers and their brutal murder by the
About the Author
Malik Siraj Akbar is the editor of The Baloch Hal, Balochistan's first online English language newspaper. He is a Hubert Humphrey Fellow with Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Phoenix. In November 2010, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) banned The Baloch Hal because of its fiercely objective and critical editorial policy. Malik termed the ban undemocratic, a "ban on expression' and vowed to fight in spite of all challenges. Liberal writers from all over Pakistan stood with The Baloch Hal against the official ban. Formerly, Malik served for five years as the Balochistan Bureau Chief of Pakistan's leading English language newspaper Daily Times and its sister publication in Urdu, Daily Aajkal. He has extensively covered the military operation in Balochistan, Baloch nationalist movement, issue of enforced disappearances, target killings, sectarian violence; secrete Taliban operations in Balochistan, women's rights issues, lawyers' movement, religious radicalization of Baloch society and several natural disasters such as the Mekran flood, Ziarat earthquake and others. As a journalist, he has covered several local and general elections held in Balochistan. His articles have been published in two of Pakistan's most reputed current affairs magazines, Herald and Newsline. Born in Panjgur District on July 9, 1983, Malik holds a Master's Degree in International Relations from the University of Balochistan. He is the first Pakistani male journalist to be awarded South Asia Foundation (SAF) Media Scholarship. He attended the prestigious Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Chennai, India, to specialize in politics, gender and identities politics. In 2010-11, he became the first Baloch journalist in the country to be awarded the coveted Hubert Humphrey Fellowship in Journalism and Mass Communication by the U.S. Department of State. As a political analyst, Malik has been interviewed and quoted by
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