QUETTA, Pakistan – A man who had recently brought his family back to Pakistan from the US confessed on Jan 29 to shooting his teenage daughter dead, motivated by his disapproval of her TikTok content, Pakistani police have said.
The shooting happened on a street in the south-western city of Quetta on Jan 28.
The suspect, Anwar ul-Haq, initially said unidentified gunmen shot and killed his American-born 15-year-old daughter before he confessed to the crime, police official Babar Baloch said.
“Our investigation so far has found that the family had an objection to her dressing, lifestyle and social gathering,” another police investigator, Mr Zohaib Mohsin, said.
“We have her phone. It is locked,” he told Reuters. “We are probing all aspects, including honour killing.”
The family recently returned to Balochistan province in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, a nation with conservative social norms, having lived in the US for about 25 years, Mr Baloch said.
The suspect has US citizenship, the officer said.
He said Haq told him his daughter began creating “objectionable” content on the social media platform TikTok when she lived in the US.
He told police that she continued to share videos on the platform after returning to Pakistan.
Mr Baloch said the main suspect’s brother-in-law has also been arrested in connection with the killing.
Police said they charged Haq with the murder. They did not offer proof of Haq’s US citizenship except for the suspect’s own testimony, and declined to say whether the US embassy has been informed of the incident.
More than 54 million people use TikTok in Pakistan, a nation of 241 million. The government has blocked the video-sharing app several times in recent years over content moderation.
Islamabad often takes issue with what it terms “obscene content” with the social media platform, which has lately started complying with requests from Pakistan to remove certain content.
More than 1,000 women are killed each year in Pakistan at the hands of community or family members over perceived damage to “honour”, according to independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
That could involve eloping, posting social media content, fraternising with men, or any other infraction against conservative values relating to women. REUTERS
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