Baloch Hal Editorial: War Against Baloch Doctors

It is an outrage and a violation of freedom of expression that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) continues to block Baloch Hal in Pakistan at a time when this voice needs to be heard across the country now, more than ever.  Reproduced below, BH editorial pegged on the target killing of Dr Baqir Shah (emphasis added):

Editorial: War Against Baloch Doctors

Balochistan: Doctors sit in protest at the murder of their colleagues. Photo: Baloch Hal

The late police surgeon was somewhat an easy target for terrorists for a host of reasons. His situation could enable any murderer to immediately vanish in thin air because of the circumstances that shrouded the late doctor. He gained enormous national and international media attention after conducting the postmortem of five foreigners who were killed on May 17 in what is now remembered as the infamous and tragic Kharotabad incident.

The Kidnapping of Another Baloch Journalist | Baloch Hal editorial

Since the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has blocked the website Baloch Hal in Pakistan, here’s Malik Siraj Akbar’s editorial that Pakistanis should have access to:

The Kidnapping of Another Baloch Journalist

Javid Naseer Rind, the former Deputy Editor of Daily Tawar, a leading anti-government Balochnewspaper published in Urdu language, was kidnapped on Saturday by unidentified people. Friends and family members of Mr. Rind, who is a widely respectednewspaper columnist and a reporter, have raised fingers at the state intelligence agencies for whisking him away. He was picked up in Laseba District of Balochistan along with another relative of his Abdul Samad Baloch. Since then the whereabouts of the Baloch journalist are unknown.

Baloch Hal Editorial: People’s Right to Know What Happened in Kharotabad

One of the injured women raises her hand before being silenced forever

Once again, an important editorial from Baloch Hal online daily, being reproduced here because the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has since November 2010 blocked the Baloch Hal website in Pakistan

Editorial: People’s Right to Know What Happened in Kharotabad

The Kharotabad tragedy was simply as tragic as tragedy can be.  The brutal killing of Chechen nationals, mainly women, including a pregnant lady, on May 27th left us all totally speechless as the nation watched on TV the extremely perturbing imagines of the victims of shooting  allegedly by the police and the Frontier Corps.

Tragedy aside, we witnessed a rare but an encouraging development for which the government of Balochistan must be commended. The investigations into the incdent, no matter how defective and imperfect, were successfully completed.

The murder of Mir Rustam Marri, champion of IDPs and human rights, Balochistan

Below, please read this recent editorial from Baloch Hal, inaccessible to readers in Pakistan since the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority blocked it in Nov 2010.  We’re reproducing it here in the interest of freedom of expression and democratic rights, and in protest at the PTA’s censorship of a sane, moderate voice from Balochistan.

Editorial: Killing of a Man Who Stood For IDP Rights 

A much needed Special Report on Balochistan…

Malik Siraj Akbar: Let's not shut the doors

The News on Sunday (Pakistan’s best weekly English language paper) took an unprecedented and much needed look at how the media in Pakistan is not covering Balochistan issues in its Special Report this week. It includes
Editorial - Outside the province, Balochistan is as neglected. There is no demand for an investigation for all bad news. Balochistan is not on newspeople’s agenda.
Shooting the messenger - Naziha Syed Ali on the risks journalists in Balochistan live with
Cautious and selective – Why is the otherwise hysterical electronic media unusually silent? By Nabeel Arshed
“The initiative has to come from the centre” – Is it still possible to reach out to the radical nationalist elements and salvage the situation? Malik Siraj Akbar, Editor Baloch Hal believes it is – my interview of him
“The mainstream media is … defending the national interest” says Alia Amirali, a researcher on the Baloch National Movement and a lecturer at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, in an interview with Farah Zia (Read Alia Amirali’s article: “After Habib Jalib” - Balochistan appears in the media only after death and destruction - in The News on Sunday, July 25, 2010) And more…
Here is the link to the BBC Urdu report “Punjab Balochistan ke Barey mein Kitna Janta Hai” by Sharjil Baloch (March 1, 2011) that I refer to in my article, which is also the basis for another article in this special report, by Aoun Sahi, ‘Wana and Waziristan in Balochistan?‘

Pakistan’s ‘enlightenment’ martyrs

Investigative journalist Saleem Shehzad

Below is the original, unabridged version of the article published in The News, Jun 9, 2011, with the somewhat misleading heading Pakistan’s secular martyrs (not all those killed for defending the values discussed in the article were ‘secular’).

'Waja': Prof. Saba Dashtiary, Balochistan University

Pakistan’s ‘enlightenment’ martyrs

Beena Sarwar

The murder of professor Saba Dashtiyari in Quetta last week, coming on the heels the killing of investigative journalist Saleem Shehzad, is yet another sign of an ongoing ‘genocide’ of progressive Pakistani intellectuals and activists. ‘Genocide’ generally means the deliberate destruction of an ethnic group or tribe. In this context, it applies to the tribe of Pakistanis who have publicly proclaimed or implicitly practiced the enlightenment agenda of freedom of conscience. They may have very different, even opposing, political views but they are people who are engaged knowingly or unknowingly with spreading ‘enlightenment’ values.

Campaign against the genocide of progressive Pakistanis

Prof. Nazima Talib of Balochistan University

Prof. Saba Dashtiary of Balochistan University

Modified from a post just sent to my yahoogroup: We need a campaign against the genocide of progressive Pakistani intellectuals and activists at the hands of those who have been distorting religion for political purposes, criminal and ethnic mafias. One or other of these elements is responsible for the murders of Salmaan Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti, Naeem Sabir (HRCP coordinator in Khuzdar, Balochistan), former senator Habib Jalib of Balochistan National Party (BNP-Mengal),  Saleem Shehzad and Prof. Dashtiyari. Baloch journalists killed include: Rehmatullah Shaeen, Ejaz Raisani, Lala Hameed Hayatan, Ilyas Nazar, Mohammad Khan Sasoil and Siddiq Eido and Abdus Rind. Also the fisherfolk leaders Haji Ghani and Abu Bakar spearheading a movement against the land mafia; Nisar Baloch who was fighting against the land mafia in Karachi; Latifullah Khan, the Communist Party member from Dir, and Nazima Talib, the professor of Balochistan University shot dead a year ago, and so many others.

Obituary: The Martyred Professor

Prof. Saba Dashtiyari giving an interview. Photo courtesy Homayoon Mobaraki

From the Baloch Hal. Reproducing here as PTA has blocked the website in Pakistan

Obituary: The Martyred Professor

By Malik Siraj Akbar

I do no know any young Baloch of my generation who was not keen to meet Professor Saba Dashtiyari during his early school days. As a school student in Panjgur, my hometown, I first heard about Saba, who was brutally shot dead on Wednesday night in Quetta where he was among the very few remaining brave men who would still take a walk on Sariab Road in spite of serious law and order problems confronting the provincial capital.
As young kids, we had heard charming stories about a Baloch professor who was an atheist but, ironically, taught theology and Islamic studies at the University of Balochistan. Another thing that fascinated us about him was the narrative that he spent most of his salary on the promotion of Balochi language academies and preparation of Balochi text books.