Umar Cheema

Who is Umar Cheema?

Umar Cheema is an investigative reporter for the Pakistani newspaper The News. In 2008, he won a Daniel Pearl Journalism Fellowship, becoming the first Pearl fellow to work at The New York Times. He also attended London School of Economics as a Chevening Scholar doing M.Sc. in Comparative Politics.

Cheema writes on corruption, politics, national security and unaccountable intelligence agencies. His bold work landed him in trouble several times. He was attacked twice other than receiving threats multiple times.

A car ran over him, after hitting twice, on a freezing night of 4 December 2004. Cheema received compound fractures and remained bed-ridden in the following six-month. After the incident, anonymous callers threatened him of dire consequences if he continued writing with the same pace on critical issues.

On 4 September 2010, he was abducted, beaten and flogged by a group of unknown assailants in military fatigues, who also shaved his head, eyebrows, and mustache, stripped him naked, and photographed him in "humiliating positions". Cheema reported that his attackers asked him if he was trying to discredit the government with his reporting, leading him to believe that they were from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.