The brother of the Pakistani Instagram star Qandeel Baloch has been arrested for her murder.
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She was also outspoken on the conditions women face in Pakistan, where an estimated 1000 women each year are murdered by their families in honour killings.
She wrote: “I need security from you”. A Pakistani social media celebrity whose online antics polarised the deeply conservative country has been murdered by her brother in a suspected honour killing, officials said on July 16, prompting a wave of shock and revulsion.
The funeral prayers of model Qandeel Baloch were offered in Dera Ghazi Khan’s Shah Sadar Din area on Sunday.
In one Facebook post this month, she thanked her supporters for “understanding the message I try to convey through my bold posts and videos”. “Though widely criticized for this, she also attracted a multitude of followers who applauded her campaign”. I believe I am a modern day feminist. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission estimates more than 3,000 women died in honor killings between 2008 and 2014 alone.
“Qandeel’s brothers had asked her to quit modeling”, her family said, according to the Express Tribune.
Advocates for a law to prevent honor killings took to social media after the news of Baloch’s death, speaking out against honor crimes and calling for reforms to existing legislation to ensure perpetrators are punished more consistently.
While earlier reports suggested that Qandeel was shot by her brother, police have now confirmed she was “strangled to death” at her Multan residence.
She is derided and feted in equal measure in Pakistan, but the popularity of her videos evidence frustrations of many young people exhausted of being told how to behave.
In a high-profile stunt, she promised to strip should Pakistan beat India in a recent cricket match — but as the BBC points out, Pakistan lost so we don’t know what would have happened.
The model, however, gave a totally different version for their meeting, telling Pakistani media that the the meeting took place on his request as maulana (scholar) wanted to see her before the Eid moon.
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While Baloch was a vocal public figure who often wrote about the problem of patriarchy and how society was constantly trying to control her, most who meet her fate are voiceless.
