MULTAN: Muhammad Wasim, the brother of a murdered celebrity, said on Sunday that he was not embarrassed to have killed her, as Qandeel Baloch’s death reignited polarising calls for action against the ‘honour’ killings.
The strangling of Qandeel, judged by many as ‘infamous’ for selfies and videos that by Western standards would appear tame, has prompted shock and revulsion. “Yes of course, I strangled her,” Wasim told reporters at the police station in Multan.
“She was on the ground floor while our parents were asleep on the roof top,” he said. “It was around 10:45pm when I gave her a tablet… and then killed her.” He said that he acted alone. “I am not embarrassed at all over what I did,” he said.
“Whatever was the case, it (his sister’s behaviour) was completely intolerable,” he said. Qandeel, believed to be in her twenties and whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, was killed on Friday night at her family’s home near Multan. Her brother, arrested a day later after her father filed a police complaint against him for the killing, appeared in court briefly on Sunday ahead of another hearing set for Wednesday.
Hundreds of women are murdered in the name of ‘honour’ every year. 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. In Lahore, a vigil held late on Saturday was attended by dozens of mourners, while an online petition entitled “No Country for Bold Women” and demanding accountability over Qandeel’s death had gained more than 1,600 signatures.
A scathing editorial in an English-language newspaper said that her murder must serve as impetus for anti-honour killing legislation. It lauded Qandeel for breezily pushing the boundaries of what Pakistan considers acceptable behaviour for women, saying her determination to live on her own terms was in itself an act of courage.
“Qandeel was an extremely astute individual who knew that what she was doing was more than being the most loved bad girl of Pakistan,” columnist and activist Aisha Sarawari told AFP. Her killing “defines yet another setback for the women of our generation… This makes it harder for women,” she said.
“Many in Pakistan have laid blame for her death on her bold and provocative public acts,” noted Benazir Jatoi, who works with the Aurat Foundation, a local NGO working on women’s legal and political empowerment. “Qandeel has put a face to the countless ordinary women that are murdered because society has given carte blanche to men,” she added.
Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose documentary on honour killings won an Oscar earlier this year, slammed Qandeel’s murder as symptomatic of an epidemic of violence against women. Her film “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness” was hailed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who in February vowed to push through anti-honour killing legislation.
