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| Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch |
Muzaffarabad
(Pakistan) (AFP) - A Pakistani social media celebrity whose selfies polarized the deeply conservative Muslim country has been murdered by
her brother in a suspected honour killing, officials said Saturday,
prompting shock and revulsion.
Qandeel
Baloch, praised by many of the country's youth for her willingness to
break social taboos but condemned by conservatives, was strangled near
the city of Multan, police said.
"Qandeel
Baloch has been killed, she was strangled to death by her brother.
Apparently it was an incident of honour killing," Sultan Azam, senior
police officer in Multan, told AFP.
Baloch,
believed to be in her twenties and whose real name was Fauzia Azeem,
had traveled with her family to Muzzafarabad village in central Punjab
province for the recent Eid holiday.
She was killed there Friday, police said, adding that the brother, Wasim, was now on the run.
Up
to 100 officers were gathered outside her family's home in
Muzzafarabad, an AFP reporter there said. Five ambulances were also
parked nearby.
"My
daughter was innocent, we are innocent, we want justice, why was my
daughter killed?" Baloch's father Azeem Ahmad told reporters there.
Police
later registered a murder case against her brother based on her
father's written complaint, in which he accused his son of killing his
daughter for honour because "his son wanted her to quit showbiz".
Hundreds of women are murdered for "honour" every year in Pakistan.
The
killers overwhelmingly walk free because of a law that allows the
family of the victim to forgive the murderer -- who is often also a
relative.
Filmmaker
Sharmeemn Obaid-Chinoy, whose documentary on honour killings won an
Oscar earlier this year, slammed Baloch's murder as symptomatic of an
"epidemic" of violence against women in Pakistan.
News
of the murder was trending on social media in Pakistan, with liberal
users praising Baloch's bravery, but some conservatives -- including
users identified as women -- condemning her relentless self-promotion.
In one typical comment, Twitter user @JiaAli wrote: "Someone had to do it. She was a disgrace."
- 'No woman is safe' -
But
Facebook user Zaair Hussain said: "RIP Qandeel Baloch. You made us
laugh, and you made us applaud," adding that history would remember her
as a "provocateur".
Baloch shot to fame in Pakistan in 2014 after a video of her pouting at the camera and asking "How em looking?" went viral.
Her defiance of tradition and defence of liberal views won her many admirers among Pakistan's overwhelmingly young population.
But
in a country where women have fought for rights for decades, and acid
attacks and honour killings remain commonplace, she was also reviled by
many and frequently subject to misogynist abuse.
Baloch
provoked controversy last month after posing for selfies with a
high-profile cleric, who was sternly rebuked by the country's religious
affairs ministry.
Earlier
this year she vowed to perform a striptease if Pakistan's cricket team
beat India at the World T20, though they later lost.
"People
are going crazy -- especially girls. I get so many calls where they
tell me I'm their inspiration and they want to be like me," she told AFP
after posting a provocative selfie on Valentine's Day.
In
her last interview with Pakistan's biggest English-language newspaper
Dawn she spoke of being married against her will at age 17 to "an
uneducated man" with whom she had a child, adding that they later
divorced.
She
had reportedly spoken of leaving the country out of fear for her
safety, with Dawn reporting that her request to officials for protection
had been ignored.
Obaid-Chinoy told AFP the murder showed no women in Pakistan would be safe "until we start sending men who kill women to jail".
"There
is not a single day where you don't pick up a paper and see a woman
hasn't been killed," the maker of "A Girl in the River: The Price of
Forgiveness" told AFP, adding: "This is an epidemic".
Obaid-Chinoy's
film was hailed by Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who in
February vowed to push through anti-honour killing legislation.
No action has been taken since then, despite a recent fresh wave of attacks on women.
"Activists have screamed themselves hoarse," said Obaid-Chinoy. "When will it stop?"
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pakistani-facebook-starlet-strangled-suspected-honour-killing-080108177.html
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