WASHINGTON, DC: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington DC has awarded Baloch journalist Malik Siraj Akbar the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program for this year’s spring session.
The five-month long fellowship, which enables democratic practitioners, scholars, and journalists from around the world to deepen their understanding of democracy and enhance their ability to promote democratic change, is named in honor of NED’s principal founders, former president Ronald Reagan and the late congressman Dante Fascell.
“Mr. Malik Akbar is an award-winning Pakistani journalist who has risked his life covering enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, assaults on journalists, and other human rights violations, particularly in his native Balochistan,” says an official announcement on the NED website. According to the site, during his fellowship, Mr. Malik plans to conduct a study of the threats facing defenders of democracy in Pakistan, focusing on the problem of enforced disappearances, attacks on journalists, and targeted killings of political leaders and human rights activists.
Malik, who was granted political asylum in the United States in October 2011, is the founder of the Baloch Hal and a former recipient of the South Asia Foundation Media Fellowship (2005) and the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship (2010-11).
http://www.thebalochhal.com/2012/02/baloch-journalist-awarded-neds-reagan-fascell-democracy-fellowship/
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