Dear China, Guess what?

You need to calm down.

You do not own the Uyghurs.  The Uyghurs have absolutely no reason to learn Mandarin.  Stop forcing the Uyghurs to learn Mandarin (a foreign language).

You do not own the residents of Taiwan.  They want to be left alone.  Leave them alone.  Stop imposing Mandarin (a foreign language) on them.

You do not own the residents of Hong Kong.  They want to be left alone.  Leave them alone.  Stop imposing Mandarin (a foreign language) on them.

Dear Chinese people living outside of China.  Guess what?  You can't violently attack people who have a different opinion than you.  If you want to act that way, go back to China and join the regime.  Then you can be free to violently attack whomever you wish to.

Sincerely,

Someone with the freedom to have their own opinion and the freedom to share it.

Ukraine official charged over acid killing

Ukrainian prosecutors have charged a high-ranking local official over a deadly acid attack on a prominent anti-corruption activist.

The agony of Kateryna Handzyuk, 33, shocked Ukraine. She died from her burns in November, after more than 10 operations. She was attacked in July.

Vladyslav Manger, head of the Kherson regional council in southern Ukraine, was charged with organising murder.

His lawyer said no evidence had been presented against his client.

Five other suspects are in detention.

Larisa Sargan, spokeswoman for Ukraine's chief prosecutor, said Mr Manger would have to appear before a judge in Kiev on Tuesday to face a detention order.

The indictment accuses Mr Manger of ordering the murder because of "personal hostility towards her for opposing illegal logging" in the region. A guilty verdict could send him to prison for life.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe horrific attack triggered an outpouring of grief for Handzyuk

Investigators went to search Mr Manger's home on Monday. His lawyer, Dmitry Ilchenko, said "the prosecution has presented no evidence" for the accusation.

Mr Manger denied knowing Handzyuk personally or having any ties, telling a TV station he was "ready to answer all questions from investigators" and that he was "not going to go anywhere and will fully co-operate with the investigation".

Two other suspects - Sergei Torbin and Nikita Grabchuk - are in pre-trial detention in the case, and three more suspects are under house arrest.

Human rights activists say there were more than 50 assaults on anti-corruption campaigners in Ukraine last year, including five murders.

Pashtun Tahaffuz (Protection) Movement - A protest Pakistan wants to hide from the world

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionMore than 30 PTM supporters were arrested and their Islamabad rally did not take place

Why do some protests get reported in Pakistan and others not? M Ilyas Khan examines a story of human rights abuses the media is reluctant to cover and the authorities do not want to be told.

Pakistan's vibrant, at times almost cacophonic media, is struggling to report a fundamental contradiction in state policy.

This was at its most visible this week outside Islamabad's National Press Club.

An open ground outside the club premises - which some call Pakistan's Hyde Park because it is used for gatherings and protests - was occupied by a few hundred students from religious seminaries linked to a banned militant group.

They were holding an event to mark Kashmir Day, an official holiday in Pakistan which is observed to highlight human rights violations by Indian security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionThe Kashmir rally was given lots of prominence and went ahead

But on the periphery of the Kashmir rally, police were busy spotting and arresting young men they suspected had come to attend another rally due to be held at the same venue.

Far from being militants, they were members or supporters of a rights movement that has been highlighting abuses by Pakistan's own military, in the ethnic Pashtun regions along the border with Afghanistan.

By the end of Tuesday, more than 30 activists of the Pashtun Tahaffuz (Protection) Movement, or PTM, had been rounded up, thrown in a police truck and taken to a police station.

The drama unfolded against the backdrop of speeches from the Kashmir rally in which speakers listed rights violations in Kashmir by the Indian army, and right in front of the eyes of the waiting media.

Dozens of television and newspaper photographers raced from one end to another trying to capture each arrest on camera.

But it was just their journalistic instincts kicking in - not a race to be first to actually cover the drama.

Because, while their TV channels thoroughly covered Kashmir Day events all over the country, including Islamabad, none of the videos of the arrests of the activists made it to the TV screens. Nor did they make headlines in the morning newspapers.

The six tribal districts of Pakistan - collectively called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), and turned into a vast sanctuary for Taliban fighters fleeing the US invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks - have been likened to an information black hole.

Many say the Talibanisation of these districts was allowed by the Pakistani establishment under a policy which sought to control Afghanistan with a view to prevent it from emerging as a strong regional ally of India, Pakistan's arch-rival.

Subsequent factionalisation of the Taliban drew the Pakistani military into tribal rivalries, triggering large-scale rights violations both by the military and the Taliban.

Image copyrightALAMY

Image captionManzoor Pashteen has accused the military of covering up years of rights abuses

The number of civilians killed in the conflict runs into thousands, and about three million people have been displaced, many of them many times.

For years, the local population caught in the conflict were too afraid to speak about transgressions, until the PTM burst onto the scene last February and started to circulate well-documented cases of abuses by the military and the Taliban, as well as the nature of the relationship between the two.

The material, the PTM's peaceful tactics and its insistence that the authorities treat people in the tribal areas in accordance with the law, as elsewhere in the country, caught the imagination of the media, and progressive elements across all ethnic groups hailed it as a good omen for the country's quest for democracy.

But then in the second half of 2018 the media came under increasing pressure, reportedly from the military, to stop covering the PTM. One by one, columnists offering analysis of the movement's message and its activities were dropped - not only by the marginal press but some of the most respected newspapers of the country.

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionPTM supporters have been demonstrating but the story is not making headlines

And any mention of the PTM completely vanished from the television screens.

More recently, the authorities have gone a step further and have begun breaking up PTM gatherings, confident in their knowledge that it is not going to get play in the media.

Over the weekend, police in Balochistan province cracked down on one such PTM gathering in which a prominent activist, Ibrahim Arman Luni, was killed.

Tuesday's gatherings were called by PTM chief Manzoor Pashteen in protest at Mr Luni's killing.