RFE/RL Radio Mashaal reporting helps save 16-year-old boy
Sixteen-year-old Ali Haider, who has been campaigning for the past six years for the return of his missing father, went missing himself on June 17 after Pakistani intelligence agencies conducted a midnight raid of his home in Balochistan’s port city of Gwadar. While mainstream media did not cover the story, RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal published the news on all its platforms, adding context through interviews with the vice president of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), Abdul Qadeer Baloch, Balochistan’s Home Minister, Ziaullah Longo, a political analyst, a human rights activist, and a representative of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. During Mashaal’s June 20 interview with Minister Longo, he promised that he would do everything in his power to recover the boy.
On June 21, Ali Haider was released.