Journalist’s body found after seven months

Islamabad: The mutilated body of Pakistani journalist Abdul Razzaq Baloch was found on August 21, seven months after he went missing. Baloch was a copy editor with the newspaper Daily Tawaar, based in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan.

The Balochi-language paper acts as a voice for secessionist groups of Balochistan province. Much of its coverage concerns the conflicts between such groups and the government.

His body was found dumped on the outskirts of the city of Karachi, the capital of Sindh province. His family allege that he was abducted on March 24 by members of the security forces. But there is no independent proof for this claim.

The president of Pakistan’s Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Pervaiz Shaukat, demanded that the government carry out an investigation.

And the union’s secretary general, Owais Aslam Ali, told the International Press Institute (IPI): “The media in Balochistan are trapped in the violent conflict between state military and intelligence agencies on one side and the militant secessionist groups on the other

“The government has not made any serious effort to end the practice of enforced disappearances and extra judicial killings of persons it deems to be security risks.”

Baloch is the eighth journalist to be killed in Pakistan since the beginning of 2013.