TODAY: Sad news in Pakistan #Islamabad where 300 anti-corruption protesters have been hospitalized, the number of dead, unknown. After violently attacking all media present, police released an official order to cease filming and broadcasting the bloodshed of protesters.
Government spinners have since claimed that the news cover was escalating and perpetuating the protests.
Many of the injured were media workers, and women who were attending the rally or fleeing the area with their children. The hospitals are subsequently overflowing.
It was day 18 of protests against the present PM there, who, opposition supporters claim is corrupt. They alleged that this morning the PM ordered the police assault against protesters, who for the most part have appeared to engage in peaceful civil disobedience for the duration of the action.
In the days preceding, the army was called in to support public safety. But, protesters this morning complained that when police opened fire the army presence had vanished, leaving protesters and media vulnerable to attacks.
There is no info available on last night's attacks on the Reporters without Borders or International Federation of Journalists websites, but a few days ago they released this statement. These deaths mark a sudden escalation of violence against journalists in a region already widely considered possibly the most dangerous place in the world for media attacks.
I haven't posted the photos of the #IslamabadMassacre here - many are from other journos so there are copyright issues and some photos of injuries are quite graphic - so if you want to see more of what is going on check my twitter feed.
The photos of the civil unrest are really amazing work and I'd encourage all my readers to check them out.The journos in Islamabad are amazingly brave to keep producing such insightful work under such terrifying circumstances. My thoughts are with those media workers who have been injured as a result of simply doing their job. #JournalismIsNotACrime Pakistan's media has a long history of courageous traditional Fourth Estate reporting, even under duress.
Additionally, be warned, there is now some fairly strange ISIS-styled, islamo-fascist, anti-semitic propaganda creeping through in the twitter talk about the massacre. So, there appears to be a risk that the Pakistanis' efforts to oust their allegedly corrupt PM, may be getting hijacked by external spinners with an agenda.
In photos circulating on twitter, the same tear gas canisters seem to have been used in Islamabad (from the same company) as those used in recent incidents & human rights crises, in several places in the world. There's no context or background to those photos, which just keep popping up everywhere on the internet after every skirmish in any country, so it's not possible to know where the pics come from - could be the same ones getting used over and over by the same spin doctors - I just don't know. Have a look and decide for yourselves, if you are interested in that angle of things.
I'll post some more news, as I get it, on my twitter account (you don't have to sign up for twitter to read it)
https://twitter.com/magnetticism or @magnetticism