THE BROTHER OF a Pakistani social media star strangled to death has been arrested for her murder and confessed to killing her “for honour”, police said today.
“The police arrested Muhammad Wasim, brother of Qandeel Baloch, for killing his sister late on Saturday,” Multan City police chief Azhar Akram told AFP.
“Wasim confessed to his crime, saying he killed his sister for honour after her recent objectionable videos, mostly posted on Facebook.”
Wasim told police he drugged his sister and then strangled her.
Baloch rose to fame for her provocative Facebook posts that saw her praised by some for breaking social taboos but condemned by conservatives.
She was killed on Friday night at her family’s home near Multan and her body was discovered yesterday.
Wasim went on the run and was arrested late Saturday in neighbouring Muzaffargarh district.
Killed on holiday
Baloch, believed to be in her twenties and whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, had travelled 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.
“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.
‘No woman is safe’
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,” she told AFP, adding:
This is an epidemic”
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