In Balochistan, in what is being seen as an “honour killing,” a woman and a man were publicly executed. This incident took place in the Daghari area, adjacent to Kooni, a few days before Eid ul Adha. The video of the incident surfaced on social media after the Eid call to prayer and quickly went viral, causing widespread grief and anger.
The circulating video on social media shows a woman and a man being shot dead in the midst of a crowd. The video appears to have been filmed on a mobile phone, showing the horrific scene. Onlookers present at the scene expressed complete apathy, and the brutal killings were carried out in an organized and deliberate manner.
According to an investigation by The Balochistan Post, the murdered man has been identified as Ehsaan Sulaimani. Sources say that a few days earlier, Ehsaan had been chased while riding a motorcycle. He managed to find shelter in a nearby house and escape. However, local individuals handed him over to the murderers after the Eid call to prayer.
The couple, children of the same dust and breath, were taken, executed in the open air, before the eyes of a crowd who watched with hearts harder than the rifles they bore.
And they called it “honor.”
But what is honor, O you who claim to possess it?
Is it a blade that falls on innocence?
Is it a fire that devours truth before it burns sin?
Honor, if it were to speak, would never raise its voice in violence. It would not whisper murder into the ears of men and call it virtue. It would not cloak cowardice in tradition, nor wash blood with pride.
Honor is not the spilling of blood in the name of a misunderstood sanctity. It is the sheltering of love, the defense of dignity, and the recognition of light in others. But in this land, this land of forgotten daughters, honor has been imprisoned by those who fear the very freedom they claim to protect.
Troubles from every shore crash upon the shoulders of women. Women, who bear men in their wombs, nourish them with their very breath, and raise them with trembling hope, only to one day see them turn into the very monsters the world fears.
And religion, ah! that garden once planted by love
Its roots drawn deep from mercy, its flowers watered with grace
Yet those who claim to be its guardians have become the thieves of its fragrance.
For what did the Prophet teach, if not mercy? What are the verses, if not lamps for the night bound traveler? And yet, the ones who raise flags of piety are often the first to extinguish the divine spark in another soul. They build walls around heaven and throw stones from within. Them, the people of the same religion, who then and there made is easy enough to portray that they were too ignorant to speak of religion, yet too blind to showcase the world what religion never, from the dawn of its time, had conveyed.
Unfortunately, a girl, born in Balochistan, is born beneath a ceiling of silence. Her schools are distant, her dreams are censored, her voice is dimmed before it learns to speak. Deprivation has become her cradle. Injustice her inheritance!
When such brutality is enacted under the guise of purity, it does not merely take lives, it crushes the spine of a generation. It teaches the young to fear their desires, to mistrust their joy, to see themselves as wrong for being alive.
This is not honor
This is erasure
And who, I ask, are we to judge innocence and guilt?
Are we the keepers of fate, the scribes of heaven?
Can the clay pot declare itself sculptor?
It is not man’s burden to decide who is pure and who is not. That belongs to the mighty, who shaped the soul in the womb and watches its course without slumber. When humans play judge, jury, and executioner, they do not rise, they descend. And in their descent, they bring down others, especially the women who carry generations in their pain.
But how can affection thrive in a house where it is mistaken for weakness? When gentleness is mocked and empathy dismissed, hatred grows like a weed, feeding on the very love that tried to uproot it. And yet, had these boys been taught not just to read, but to feel, not just to rule, but to listen, what different men they could have become. Literacy alone is not enough. Literacy must walk beside it. For when wisdom touches the heart, not just the mind, even the fiercest storm can soften into rain.
The punishment of the innocent will not bring justice
Only more darkness
Only more grief
Only more broken girls who walk the earth as if they are ghosts in their own homes
So let us rise, not in rage, but in remembrance of what honor truly is
Let us educate, not execute
Let us protect, not punish
Let us return culture to its birthplace, love
On the day when honor is not a blade but a balm, Balochistan shall not mourn its daughters but raise them as gardens raise their sun
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