Qandeel Baloch, one of Pakistan’s most famous and controversial social media stars, has been strangled to death in what police are calling a case of so called “honor” killing in the city of Multan in the country’s province of Punjab.
Azhar Akram, Multan’s chief police officer, told CNN that Baloch was killed by her brother in her family’s home after he had protested at the “kind of pictures she had been posting online.”
After going on the run, the brother was later arrested and confessed on a video that police showed at a news conference.
Baloch’s father Muhammad Azeem reported her death to the police.Baloch, 25, was from the Punjabi town of Kot Addu and had risen to fame due to the brazenly sassy, and increasingly political, videos that she had started posting on Facebook.
Her videos were not very different from thousands others shared by 20-something social media celebrities around the Internet — she pouted like a kitten into the camera, discussed her various hairstyles and shared cooing confessions from her bedroom about her celebrity crushes.
Baloch pushed boundaries
Yet in Pakistan, her flirty antics were unusual, pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable of women in Pakistan.According to the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Gender Gap Report, Pakistan was second to last on the list of 145 countries with regards to gender disparity.
The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli 