[DAWN] WHEN the rock band Bumbu Sauce wrote an anthem to Qandeel Baloch, its members probably did not think it would soon be a lament. In a recent interview with the BBC, band frontman Masterjee Bumbu explained the Qandeel Baloch phenomenon, saying that she’s a "badly behaved woman" who uses the internet to communicate; "those are two things Pakistain does not deal well with as a society: the internet and badly behaved women". His words were prescient. Pakistain’s inability to deal with Qandeel Baloch’s behaviour drove, allegedly, her brothers to murder her last week.
Owing to her brothers’ involvement, Qandeel Baloch’s murder has been termed an ’honour’ killing. Framed as such, people feel comfortable pointing to her ’bayghairat’ behaviour to justify her brothers’ heinous action. Many tweeted in support of her killing, describing her as a disgrace to Pakistain. She had received death threats during her lifetime, and comments under her social media posts frequently called for her murder. Three weeks ago, she contacted the authorities to ask for security.
Few will be surprised, then, that her death has not met with the universal outpouring of shock and horror that we saw a few weeks ago for Amjad Sabri, who was rubbed out for essentially the same reason -- a perceived transgression. The fact is, we rarely see any public dismay each time a woman is killed for allegedly speaking to the wrong man, choosing who to marry or otherwise acting against her family’s wishes. How could we? There are around a thousand such murders reported in Pakistain each year, and our society is already too brutalised to mourn each one. Moreover, because such murders are categorised as ’honour’ killings, there is a sense that the tragedy is somehow different, explicable and thus palatable. |