Three teenage girls were buried alive by their tribe in a remote part of Pakistan to punish them for attempting to choose their own husbands, in an “honor” killing case.
After news of the deaths emerged, male politicians from Balochistan Province defended the killings in parliament, claiming the practice was part of “our tribal custom.”
The girls, thought to have been aged between 16 and 18, were kidnapped by a group of men from their Umrani tribe.
They were driven to a rural area and then injured by being shot. Then, while still alive, they were dragged bleeding to a pit, where they were covered with earth and stones, Human Rights Watch said. Officials, speaking off the record, confirmed the killings.
However, six weeks after the deaths, no one has been arrested, amid claims of a cover-up. According to several accounts, Balochistan government vehicles were used to abduct the girls and the killing was overseen by a tribal chief who is the brother of a provincial minister from the ruling Pakistan People’s Party.
Some reports said that two older relatives of the girls tried to intervene but they too were shot and buried with them while still alive.
“This is a heinous criminal offense,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. “We have corroborated it and cross-corroborated it, but the second the police admit that it happened, it would trigger an investigation.”
Hasan said that with a presidential election on Saturday, one in which Balochistan’s provincial parliament will be strongly relied on to deliver votes, action that would antagonize the region’s politicians was highly unlikely.
In Pakistan’s national parliament, a member of parliament from Balochistan, Israrullah Zehri, said on Friday that “this action was carried out according to tribal traditions,” a view backed up by some other male lawmakers, who attacked a woman senator who had raised the case.
“These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them,” Zehri said over the weekend.
The killings happened in the Naseerabad district of Balochistan. Although so-called honor killings are not unusual, burying the victims alive seems to have been brutal even by tribal standards.
“It is very common for women in these cases to be deprived of an honorable burial. This is to make sure others learn the lesson,” said Samar Minallah, a human rights activist based in Islamabad.
Sarang Mastoi, a local journalist in Balochistan with Pakistan channel KTN, said that the villagers were scared to talk openly about the crime but he had been taken by some to see the burial site.
Under tribal — not religious — tradition, marriages are carefully arranged by elders. Marrying without permission is considered an affront to the honor of the tribe. Sadiq Umrani, a provincial minister, admitted that the girls were buried alive, but denied the involvement of his brother.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS