The Role of Media in Baluchistan
The media is generally referred to various means of communication such as television, radio, newspaper, websites or books. The term “media” can be used as a collective word for press. From a couple of years, the role of media in Baluchistan has been discussed on various TV talk shows, radio channels and newspapers. Still the voice of Baluchistan is unreachable, ignored and neglected. That is why yet most people in Pakistan are unaware of the recent situations of Baluchistan as well as the history of Baluchistan.
The current situations prove as if Baluchistan’s issues do not carry any importance for the mainstream Pakistani media. The lack of infrastructure and the Pakistani state’s Orwellian control over the local newspapers and web sites has fueled a fire of desire in Baloch mation to be heard. In the past couple of years, many local newspapers such as Daily Asaap, Daily Azadi, and the Baluchistan Express were banned or besieged.
In the meantime Baluchistan’s first online English newspaper, the Baloch Hal, was banned by the Pakistan telecommunication Authority (PTA) two years ago and the ban continues. After the consistent struggled to keep the Baluchs’ voice out of the reach of the world, the nation’s voice could not still be stopped to be heard. Baluchistan’s local media has definitely played a role in bringing the serious issues of human rights in front of the world. That is why now the Nation’s issue is being discussed in different political talk shows internationally.
Despite all that, Pakistani national TV shows are not showing both sides of the picture. Hence, most people of Pakistan yet do not have any idea about the history of Baluchistan which makes it harder to understand the current political ups and downs of Baluchistan and differentiate between myth and reality. On the other hand, the media, in so me other cases, shows a totally different angle of the situation. Facts which may not have taken place or that might have taken place but were not in the favor of the Pakistani nationalism are often kept in the dark.
In these circumstances, the Baloch nation has stopped trusting the Pakistani media. They believe a source that doesn’t bring up front the abductions, tortures and killing of Baluchs by Pakistani army, can’t be expected to be believed any more. Our people have been sitting in hunger camps with the pictures of their loved ones, in front of the Supreme Court, high court for justice in Quetta, Karachi and Islamabad but their struggle didn’t possess enough strength to be covered in most Pakistani newspapers and news channels. This has brought up a lot of reasons why Baloch Nation is not ready to cooperate with a territory that uses it for its economic revenue, other than that it and its people possess no importance and have been neglected from more than six decades.
However, the Baloch Nation will continue the struggle for free media coverage in the world so that the world recognizes it’s serious issues that include the violation of human rights. As these days the world media is exclusively trying to bring up the Baluchistan issue in the front after the US Congress Representative Dana Rohrabacher presented a house recurrent resolution for Baluchistan’s self-determination. Definitely this issue is not going to be hidden from the world anymore and will be recognized in the world very soon.
