Malik Siraj Akbar

Who is Malik Siraj Akbar?

Malik Siraj Akbar is a journalist, blogger and democracy defender based in Washington D.C. He is the editor-in-chief of The Baloch Hal, the first online English language newspaper of Pakistan's Balochistan province and a contributing writer for the Huffington Post. In 2010-11, Akbar was a Hubert Humphrey Fellow at Arizona State University while in 2012, the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington DC-based organization, awarded him a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship where he researched the political assassinations, enforced disappearances and attacks on journalists in Balochistan.

In October 2011, Akbar was granted political asylum in the United States owing to threats he said he faced from the Pakistani military authorities due to his outspoken writings that exposed human rights abuses in his native Balochistan. He shared his threats in an interview with CNN and in a blog post "Why I fled Pakistan" he wrote for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Akbar's writings mainly focus on the Baloch nationalist movement, human rights, press freedom, sectarian killings in Pakistan, the war on terror and U.S.-Pakistan relations. He has interviewed leading Pakistani government officials serving in Balochistan and the leaders of the Baloch nationalist movement. His book, The Redefined Dimensions of the Baloch Nationalist Movement, was released in 2011.