Malik Siraj Akbar (Urdu: ملک سراج اکبر) is an ethnic Baloch journalist based in the United States.
[12] In 2005, he became the first Pakistani male journalist to be awarded the Madanjeet Singh South Asia Foundation Media Scholarship that enabled him to undertake a one-year post-graduation diploma at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, India, where he studied print journalism focusing on politics, identities politics and gender issues.
[12] 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.
[13] In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Akbar said it was a "painful" decision for him to apply for political asylum in the United States, adding that many Baluch journalists had disappeared and were subsequently found dead for which the Pakistani authorities were blamed.
[21] On 9 November 2010, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked The Baloch Hal, Balochistan's first online English language newspaper Akbar had founded one year earlier in 2009.
The PTA alleged that the Baloch Hal had published anti-Pakistan material, a charge Akbar vehemently denied in an interview with German Radio Deutsche Welle (DW).
The Institute aims to create a global understanding of the contemporary challenges and opportunities offered by the resource-rich Baloch region and promote awareness about its people, history, economy, culture and politics.
For instance, Daily Tawar, an Urdu language newspaper, published the news[30] about the Balochistan Institute as its top story with Akbar's picture.