Pakistan police on Friday said a father shot dead his daughter after she refused to delete her account on popular video-sharing app TikTok.
In the Muslim-majority country, women can be subjected to violence by family members for not following strict rules on how to behave in public, including in online spaces.
“The girl’s father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her,” a police spokesperson told AFP.
According to a police report shared with AFP, investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday “for honor.” He was subsequently arrested.
Yes, ‘honor killing’ happens at different rates in different cultures, and it being an important factor in Middle Eastern culture could explain a higher rates in these cultures. But I am wondering, do we kill our daughters and wifes less here in the West? Or do we just give up different motives than honor? The US certainly has a very high femicide rate, higher than most Middle Eastern countries. (according to this website. Haven’t found infanticide rates yet.
Okay I looked at these numbers and holy fuck, the only Middle Eastern country higher than America is Iraq, with 3.0 vs 2.5 per 100k women. For context the Iraqi data is taken from 2013, smack dab in the middle of the ISIS reign of terror. Like this isn’t even a gotcha anymore I actually feel bad for American women who have to deal with this shit. There’s no data for Pakistan, but for example Egypt is at 0.5, Jordan 0.6 and Palestine 0.3. With Egypt (which is middle-of-the-pack for the region) lower than most of Europe, a whole bunch of people should be doing a whole bunch of introspection before crying about other people’s (admittedly vile) traditions.
But it’s got nothing to do with ‘honor’ so it’s okay. /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Doesn’t split it by gender. Obviously there are much worse places (looking at you, Caribbean), but the U.S. needs to look in the mirror.