Father kills daughter over TikTok ‘honour' in Pakistan
Police arrested him.
This follows the killing of TikTok star Sana Yousaf.
Pakistan police on Friday said a father shot dead his daughter after she refused to delete her account on popular video-sharing app TikTok.
In the Muslim-majority country, women can be subjected to violence by family members for not following strict rules on how to behave in public, including in online spaces.
'The girl's father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her,' a police spokesperson told AFP.
According to a police report shared with AFP, investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday 'for honour'.
He was subsequently arrested.
The victim's family initially tried to 'portray the murder as a suicide' according to police in the city of Rawalpindi, where the attack happened, next to the capital Islamabad.
In June, a 17-year-old girl and TikTok influencer with hundreds of thousands of online followers was killed at home by a man whose advances she had refused.
Farooq Naeem/AFP
Sana Yousaf had racked up more than a million followers on social media accounts including TikTok, where she shared videos of her favourite cafés, skincare products, and traditional outfits.
TikTok is wildly popular in Pakistan, in part because of its accessibility to a population with low literacy levels.
Women have found both audience and income on the app, which is rare in a country where fewer than a quarter of the women participate in the formal economy.
However, only 30% of women in Pakistan own a smartphone compared to twice as many men (58%), the largest gap in the world, according to the Mobile Gender Gap Report of 2025.
Pakistani telecommunications authorities have repeatedly blocked or threatened to block the app over what it calls 'immoral behaviour', amid backlash against LGBTQ and sexual content.
Arif Ali/AFP
In southwestern Balochistan, where tribal law governs many rural areas, a man confessed to orchestrating the murder of his 14-year-old daughter earlier this year over TikTok videos that he said compromised her 'honour'.
Reuters reported that 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.
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