ISLAMABAD – Renowned journalist and trade union leader Minhaj Barna breathed his last here at a local hospital Friday morning. He was 86.
Fighting all his life to win rights for working journalists, the legendary crusader lost his last battle against fatal hepatitis C for which he was operated upon a week ago.
Belonging to a brave Pathan family, Minaj Barna was born in 1925 in village Qaimpur of the Indian UP province where he received his early education and later pursued higher studies at the famous Jamia Millia, New Dehli. At the very outset of his college days he was deeply influenced by youth movement for freedom of speech. He joined All India Youth Federation, a student wing of the local Communist Movement against the oppressive British Raaj.
Groomed in an impassioned environment to win freedom, Barna started his career as a reporter in a Mumbai-based the Urdu newspaper Dehli Inqilab.
After 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, his parents settled in Quetta but Burna shifted to Karachi where he joined Pakistan Times, then a leading English language daily newspaper. Being one of the founding members of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Barna also laid the foundation of the All Pakistan Newspaper Employees Confederation (APNEC) and was elected its first chairman in 1966.
He was the moving spirit behind journalists’ struggle against the infamous Press and Publication Ordinance (PPO) promulgated by military dictator late Field Marshal Ayub Khan.
Minhaj Barna passes away
