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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Another Pakistani Woman Is Killed for ‘Honor,’ but She’s Not Forgotten
Women in Pakistan die every day for supposedly dishonoring their families, and arrests are rare. But Bano Bibi’s defiant last words were caught on video.The woman took her final steps on the open desert terrain in southern Pakistan and stopped, turning her back to her executioner as he raised his gun.
“You can shoot me,” said Bano Bibi, 35, her beige shawl fluttering in the wind. “But nothing more than that.”
It caused outrage not just because it was another so-called honor killing in Pakistan — where, on average, more than one woman is slain every day for supposedly dishonoring her family — but because the authorities took action only after a video of the shootings went viral, more than six weeks later.
But Ms. Bibi’s death, her defiant last words and the impunity enjoyed for weeks by those who ordered her death have yet again cast doubt on Pakistani officials’ ability, or will, to tackle one of the country’s most persistent and egregious forms of violence.
In the video, male onlookers can be seen watching in silence, neither moving nor trying to intervene, some of them filming the execution with their smartphones.
But such killings happen in all economic classes and across the country, including in large cities, and even among Pakistan’s diaspora. In January, a man lured his 14-year-old daughter, who was living in New York, back to Pakistan and killed her because of her lifestyle, including the clothing she wore.
According to the Sustainable Social Development Organization, a Pakistani nonprofit, such killings led to criminal convictions in just 0.5 percent of all reported cases last year.
But the killings continued and even increased in number over the past few years, said Farah Zia, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Her organization uses data provided by the police, and she said the real toll was likely to be much higher.
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www.nytimes.com
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