Hira Anwar, 14, lived in two contrasting worlds in New York, where she was born and grew up. Outside her home, she was a typical American teenage girl, laughed at friends, posting videos on Tictok and dreamed of a bounded future.
Inside the house, its reality was very different. Her parents, Pakistani immigrants who settled in the United States two decades ago, expected that they would adhere to their cultural and religious values, which required women modesty. For them, Hira brave, the expressive internet presence was a direct challenge.
This tension, known in immigrant households in southern Asia in the West, ended this week with deadly violence. Hira was fatally shot on Monday night by her father and Uncle, a few days after he arrived at Pakistan on what she was told that she was a family vacation, police said. The authorities called her death a “honor of murder.”
In a cold recognition in Quetti, the capital of the southwestern Province of Balochistan, Hiran father, Anwar Ul-Haq, said the shame brought the family, announcing what he called inappropriate videos online, police said.
Hira -O’s death is a part of a deeply built -in pattern of violence against women in Pakistan and within her diaspora, said the advocates of the rights, an ancient problem that has taken over dangerous new dimensions with the increase in social media.
AND Pakistan Human Rights CommissionThe Independent Group for Rights recorded 588 so -called homicides of honor in Pakistan in 2024, compared to 490 in 2023 and almost matching 590 reported 2022.
Women often become a target by refusing for forcible marriages, seeking divorce or separation, to be in relationships that family considers inappropriate or participating in other actions considered to be violated by conservative values. In one case last year, his brother killed a girl for using a cell phone. In the second young woman, his parents poisoned his parents fatally for going out.
In several cases, the Pakistanian family in Western countries lured their daughters back to Pakistan under false excuses. There they limited their freedom, forced them to marriage to relatives – often to secure visas for men – or, in some cases, killed them.
2022 were two Pakistani sisters holding Spanish residences tortured and killed The day after arriving at Punjab Province, police said in Pakistan. Their husbands, uncle and brother performed murder after sisters sought divorce from forced marriages, according to researchers.
Other murders occurred in the west, and the perpetrators fled to Pakistan in some cases to avoid arrest.
In May, the authorities in Pakistan, working with Italian officials, arrested a woman who was convicted with her husband with her husband, The killing of their teenage daughter. The murder, which happened in northern Italy, was a rejection of a forced marriage in Pakistan over the daughter, the authorities said.
Experts who study the diaspora in southern Asia in Western countries say that intergenerational tensions are widely widespread because younger generations born abroad are increasingly causing traditional values.
Cavita Mehra, Executive Director Sakhi for South Asia survivorsA non -profit organization based in New York, she said that in the United States, the gender violence occurred at higher rates within South Asia communities. Nearly half of the southern Asians in the United States report on such violence at least once, according to research.
“This is not because our community is more violent,” said Mrs. Mehra, “but because we are involved in intergenerational trauma – cycles of pain, silence and patriarchal control, shaped history of colonialism, movement and migration.”
In the case of murders this week, a 14-year-old Hira, her father told the police that unidentified armed people opened fire to him and his daughter while traveling to her uncle’s house, said Babar Baloch, police officer, Quetti police officer.
But after collecting evidence and recording witness statements, the police became suspicious and detained her father, who worked as a Uber driver in New York and has two more daughters. Father, Mr. Ul-Haq and his son-in-law were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of murder.
In her acknowledgment, police said Mr. Ul-Haq expressed complaints with clothing, lifestyle and social relationships of his daughter.
Pakistan has introduced laws over the years, some have carried capital punishmentfor the suppression of the so -called homicide of honor.
In 2016, after public anger over The killing of the Qandeel Baloch Social Media Star by her brother Parliament adopted a law that closes a legal hole This made it possible for families to forgive the perpetrators.
However, gender -based violence lasts for social acceptance and systemic bias in law enforcement and judiciary in Pakistan, experts said.
“Honorary crimes and femicides should be treated as crimes against the state,” said Shazia Nizamani, a legal expert based in Karachi. “Even if the family decides not to carry out legal proceedings, the state is responsible to ensure that justice is delivered.”
