Facebook star killed ‘by brother for honor’ in Pakistan

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan: A Pakistani social media celebrity whose selfies polarized the country has been murdered by her brother in a suspected honor killing, officials said.
Qandeel Baloch 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 honor killing,” said Sultan Azam, senior police officer in Multan.
Baloch, believed to be in her 20s, had traveled with her family from the southern port city of Karachi to Muzzafarabad village in central Punjab province for the recent Eid holiday.
She was killed there Friday, police said.
“The brother was also there last night and the family told us that he strangled her to death,” Azhar Akram, another senior police official in Multan, said.
Police said the brother was now on the run. Up to 100 officers were gathered outside her family’s home in Muzzafarabad, an AFP reporter there said, preventing neighbors from gathering. Five ambulances were also parked nearby.
Filmmaker Sharmeemn Obaid-Chinoy, whose documentary on honor 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.
In one typical comment, Twitter user @JiaAli wrote: “Someone had to do it. She was a disgrace.”
But Facebook user Zaair Hussain said: “RIP Qandeel Baloch. You made us laugh, and you made us applaud... I think history will remember you as a provocateur, a living exhibit, a larger than life role — just as you would want to be remembered.”
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 defense of liberal views won her many admirers among Pakistan’s overwhelmingly young population.
Baloch had reportedly spoken of leaving the country after Eid out of fear for her safety.
Obaid-Chinoy told AFP the murder would make women feel less safe.
“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” said.
“What is frightening is this is an epidemic... I really feel that no woman is safe in this country, until we start making examples of people, until we start sending men who kill women to jail.”
Obaid-Chinoy’s film was hailed by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who in February vowed to push through anti-honor killing legislation.