Pakistani journalist given U.S. Asylum Tells of Threats, Disappearances in Baluchistan
By Pamela Constable for The Washington Post
Siraj Ahmed Malik, an ambitious young Pakistani journalist, was enjoying a stint last fall on a fellowship at the University of Arizona when he started getting chilling messages from home.
One after another, his friends and colleagues were disappearing, he learned, and their bodies were turning up with bullet holes and burn marks. A doctorâs son from his home town was arrested and vanished. A fellow reporter was kidnapped, and his corpse was found near a river. A student leader was detained, and his bullet-riddled body dumped on a highway. A writer whose stories Malik had edited was shot and killed.
âThese were kids I had played cricket with, people I had interviewed, younger reporters I had taught,â Malik, 28, said in an interview last week in Arlington County, where he now lives. The final straw came in early June, when one of his mentors, a poet and scholar, was gunned down in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, Malikâs native province.
On Aug. 19, Malik applied for political asylum in the United States. In his petition, he said that his work as a journalist and ethnic activist in Baluchistan, where he had exposed military abuses, made him likely to be arrested, tortured, abducted and âultimately killed by the governmentâ if he returned.
Two weeks ago, his petition was granted. It was a highly unusual decision by U.S. immigration officials, given Pakistanâs status: a strategic partner in Washingtonâs war against Islamic terrorism; a longtime recipient of U.S. aid; and a democracy with an elected civilian government and vibrant national news media.
âI never wanted to leave my country, but I donât want to become a martyr, either,â said Malik, a soft-spoken but steely man who spends his days hunched over a laptop at coffee shops in Clarendon, checking with sources back home to update his online newspaper, whose name means âBaluch Truth.â
âWhatâs going on in Baluchistan is like the dirty war in Argentina,â he said. âI need to be telling the story, but I canât afford to become the story.â
Baluchistan is the Wild West of Pakistan â a remote desert province, larger than France, that is home to a mix of radical Islamic groups, rival ethnic and refugee gangs, rebellious armed tribes, and security agencies that have long been reported to kidnap, torture and kill dissidents with impunity.
Living under constant threat
Yet this ongoing violence and skulduggery receives scant international attention. Foreign journalists are banned from visiting the region alone, while headlines about Pakistan are dominated by a separate, high-stakes border conflict in which American drones and Pakistani troops are battling the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
As a result, a handful of local journalists such as Malik have been left to investigate and report the news without big-city patrons or visiting foreign delegations to give them cover.
âThe threat of disappearance was always lurking in the back of our minds,â Malik wrote in his asylum petition. âMy friends, colleagues and I lived with the knowledge that yesterday it was him that disappeared; today it is someone else; tomorrow it could easily be me.â
As Malik recounted over coffee, pressure and threats from unidentified intelligence agents were a daily hazard. According to his asylum file, agents accosted him in airports and hotels, detained and questioned him, and repeatedly threatened to âteach me a lesson.â
Malik acknowledges that as an advocate for the Baluch nationalist cause, his journalism is hardly neutral. The ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from the central government, includes armed groups. Malik claims that he does not condone them, but he describes their stance as a âdefensiveâ response to official abuse.
Still, his case for protection was bolstered by reports from human rights groups and letters from university officials in Arizona, who called him ânothing short of brave.â In a July report, Human Rights Watch described a âpractice of enforced disappearancesâ of Baluch leaders and intellectuals, often by security agencies, and listed 45 abductions or killings since 2009.
Activists including Malik assert that more than 5,000 Baluch have vanished in the past decade, but the issue has never been seriously addressed, while the government has both co-opted and persecuted Baluch tribal chiefs. In 2007, Pakistanâs military president fired the head of the Supreme Court, who sought to probe the disappearances. In 2008, a civilian government took office and an investigative commission was established, but little action has been taken.
âThe authorities have no answers because there is no accountability,â said one Pakistani diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. He suggested that Malik had exaggerated his fear of persecution as a âployâ to remain in the United States, but he also called disappearances âthe tip of the icebergâ in a society where security forces hold sway behind the scenes. Even a chief justice, he added, âknows there are lines he cannot cross.â
Driven to speak out
Najam Sethi, a newspaper publisher and titan of Pakistanâs liberal media establishment, was Malikâs boss from 2006 to 2010, when he worked as a correspondent in Quetta. For the past few months, Sethi has been on his own sabbatical at the New America Foundation in Washington, partly to escape the pressure he faces at home.
At a public forum here last week, Sethi described Pakistanâs news media as free to snipe at politicians and expose financial scandals but said it remains cautious about reporting on military and intelligence institutions, partly out of respect and partly out of fear.
âThe media are scared, because there is no one to protect them,â Sethi said.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 40 Pakistani journalists have been killed since 1992. In May, a well-known investigative reporter, Saleem Shahzad, was abducted and found murdered. Shahzad had received threats after writing about al-Qaeda infiltration of the military, and a senior U.S. military official said his killing had been âsanctionedâ by the government.
Asked about Malik, Sethi said he thought his former staffer had been too aggressive and outspoken. As Malikâs editor, he said, he had intervened several times with military authorities to protect him. âI wish he hadnât gone so far,â Sethi said. âHe crossed too many red lines.â
Malik, however, said he felt âbetrayedâ by such liberal media leaders, saying they have avoided speaking out against oppression in Baluchistan. He recounted how Baluch groups had been galvanized by the 2006 army slaying of the legendary tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti.
âFor us, the killing of Bugti was Pakistanâs 9/11,â Malik said. After that, he said, he stepped up his exposure of the violence and abuses. His activities drew increasing attention from government agents, who, he said, called him a âtraitorâ and threatened to kill him if he did not stop.
Instead, Malik persisted. In early 2010, he attended a conference in India and denounced the disappearances. From his fellowship perch in Arizona last winter, and then while working briefly at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington in the spring, he wrote and spoke out at every opportunity.
But as the deaths of other Baluch journalists and friends began to mount, Malik said last week, he began to hesitate about returning.
âBaluchistan needs a messenger to the world,â he said, itching to get back to his reporting. âHere in the United States, I donât have an office or money, but at least I can stay alive and get the message out.â
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