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Pakistani police have arrested a man suspected of killing prominent activist Afzal Kohistani, who had campaigned against so-called "honor" killings.

Kohistani, 31, was shot dead on March 6 in the northwestern city of Abbottabad, police said on March 8.

Local police chief Abbas Majeed identified the suspect as 23-year-old Faizur Rahman, Afzal's nephew.

Police have registered a case against him and recommended that he be charged with murder, Majeed said.

Kohistani gained prominence in 2012, calling for justice after four of his female relatives and two of his brothers were killed after a video emerged of them singing and clapping to music.

Kohistani said a tribal council had ordered their executions for "breaching the honor" of the family, although no arrests were ever made.

Hundreds of women are killed every year in Pakistan in honor killings for violating what Pakistani conservatives consider traditions on love, marriage, and public behavior.

Pakistan's parliament passed legislation against honor killings in 2016, introducing tough punishment and removing a loophole in the law that allowed killers to walk free if pardoned by family members.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschuetz (file photo)
Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschuetz (file photo)

Austria has protested Ukraine's move to bar an Austrian reporter, calling the move an act of censorship.

Ukraine told Austria it would deny entry to Christian Wehrschuetz, the Kyiv bureau chief for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF, branding him a "threat to national security," an Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on March 8.

Wehrschuetz says Kyiv accuses him of crossing the bridge Russia has built between Crimea, which Russian forces seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Russia. He denies the accusation, saying that when he reported on the bridge in July his crew crossed it but he did not.

"The travel ban imposed on...Wehrschuetz in Ukraine is an unacceptable act of censorship," Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, who danced with Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding last year, said on Twitter on March 7.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman said on March 8 that the Ukrainian ambassador had been summoned and would meet the ministry's secretary general on March 11. Kneissl will be in Moscow that day to meet her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and dpa

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"Watchdog" is a blog with a singular mission -- to monitor the latest developments concerning human rights, civil society, and press freedom. We'll pay particular attention to reports concerning countries in RFE/RL's broadcast region.

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