Baluch newspaper decides to close amid Frontier Corp siege

A premier newspaper in the restive Baluchistan province, scene of a war of liberation that Pakistani media describes as an insurgency, has decided to cease publication after remaining under the siege of the Frontier Corp in capital Quetta, the BBC reported in its Urdu language web site.

Persecution and targeting of Baluchistan journalists and newspapers who report objectively on Baluch issues is an ongoing phenomenon in Quetta.

About ten months ago, senior Baluch journalist and former president of the Baluchistan Union Journalists and Quetta Press Club, Shahzada Zulfiqar, was fired from his job on a Pakistani television network on pressure from Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

Zulfiqar was punished for his objective reports, though the television channel he worked for cited budgetary constraints in laying him off. He now works for the premier invetigative monthly Herald and AFP.

More recently a young journalist from Quetta, Malik Siraj Akbar, received death threats on the phone after publishing a report in the Times of India. Punjabi and mhajir chauvinists, who want Baluchistan enslaved forever are also demanding that the journalist be tried for sedition.

Akbar had clearly written the Baluch were against the amalgamation of their idependent state into Pakistan.

Akbar said he stands by each and every word of his artilce: