WSI:International Conference in Washington D.C

The World Sindhi Institute
August 10, 2006
Press Release

WSI Annual International Conference Scheduled
Pulitzer Prize winning author Steve Coll announced as keynote speaker

Washington, DC—Steve Coll, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Ghost Wars, will be the keynote speaker for the World Sindhi Institute’s Annual International Conference. The conference scheduled for Monday, November 6, 2006, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m at the George Washington University. The topic of conference will be "War, Terrorism and Military Rule: Challenges to Freedom of the Press in Sindh and Balochistan". During the conference, participants will address the lack of freedom of information and of the press, the persecution of journalists, the military operations in Balochistan, and the human rights violations currently being committed by the Pakistani government, especially in Sindh and Balochistan.

“This conference,” says Munawar Laghari, Executive Director of the World Sindhi Institute, “will expose the strategy of the Pakistani government to infringe upon the rights to information and _____expression of the Pakistani people. The persecution of journalists and political activists in Pakistan must end. The government of Pakistan must no longer use deception to control its people.”

Keynote speaker Steve Coll spent twenty years of his career as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post and is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Beginning in 1989, Mr. Coll became the Post’s South Asia correspondent and covered India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. He became the Post’s first international investigative correspondent in 1992 and began covering trans-national subjects, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and global economic integration. In 2004, he stepped down from his position as a managing editor at the Post to focus on writing and book authorship. In 2005, he received his second Pulitzer Prize for Ghost Wars; the first was for his explanatory journalism with David A. Vise concerning the SEC. Ghost Wars received the Pulitzer in the general non-fiction category. It has also received the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross award for the best book published on international affairs in 2004.

For more information, please contact Munawar Laghari at 202-223-1777 or via e-mail at wsihq@worldsindhi.org. You may also visit www.worldsindhi.org for more information.

Through nonviolent means, The World Sindhi Institute works relentlessly for universal human rights and humanitarian law for the Sindhis of Sindh, in southeastern Pakistan