Women in Pakistan are enraged by the violent killing of a teenage social media influencer. They are protesting the June 2 shooting of Sana Yousaf inside her house in the capital, Islamabad.
Police in the city say they have arrested a 22-year-old man in connection with the her death. Yousaf had reportedly refused his friendship.
For many women in Pakistan, the latest killing of a social media influencer is a reminder of the widespread violence, harassment, and abuse women suffer in public and in online spaces in the conservative Muslim nation of 240 million people.
"Women are furious," said Shad Begum, a human rights activist in Islamabad. "We were particularly shocked by the reaction of some narrow-minded people online."
Begum was alluding to posts on social media that flooded the Internet after the murder. Mostly male social media users said the killing was justified because of Yousaf's popular social media profile in a conservative society in which so-called honor codes restrict women's choices and public behavior.
Yousaf had over 1 million followers on various social media platforms, with more than 800,000 on TikTok, where she shared a video celebrating her 17th birthday last week. She frequently shared lip-sync videos and promoted beauty products on the video-sharing platform.
"We are worried about the explosive growth of hate and intolerance," Begum said.
On June 5, rights activists protested Yousaf's killing in Islamabad and the northwestern city of Peshawar.
"The murder is a chilling reminder of the dangers that women and girls face when they assert autonomy over their lives and choices," said Maheen Pracha, communications lead at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the leading national nongovernmental rights watchdog.
She said Islamabad needs to take quick steps to make online spaces safe for women.
"[This includes] algorithm accountability that prevents such platforms from disproportionately amplifying content that may expose young women to harm," she said.
Yousaf is the latest female social media influencer killed in Pakistan.
In January, police in the southwestern city of Quetta charged Anwar ul-Haq with murder after he confessed to orchestrating the killing of his 14-year-old daughter Hira Anwar, because he found her TikTok "offensive" and an affront to his "honor."
In October, police in the southern seaport city of Karachi said a man confessed to killing four female relatives over their TikTok videos.
Every year, hundreds of women are killed across Pakistan. Most are killed by close relatives or men known to them in what are known as honor killings.
"This is very shocking. It's very unsettling," said Farzana Bari, a professor of gender studies in Islamabad's Quaid-e Azam University.
"If we can't make this social media space safer for women, then it will be another kind of exclusion that will be taking place in our society," she said.
Bari said the killing manifests the patriarchal mindset, which is misogynistic.
"It is unwilling to accept women as independent human beings who have the right to say no to any advances by a man," she said.
In some positive news for women's rights in Pakistan, Pakistan enacted a new law last week banning child marriage and sets 18 years as the minimum age for marriage in Islamabad.
However, women's activists still see thorough legal and social changes that will make public and private spaces safe for women as a long way off.
"It's an entire behavior of how girls and women are seen in our society that needs to be transformed," said Meena Gabeena, a child rights activist in Islamabad.
