The honour that kills

Bano Satakzai stood on the cracked earth of Dagari, a village that once echoed with her childhood laughter. Across from her stood men she had known her whole life — uncles, cousins, neighbours. In another life, they had passed her plates of rice at weddings. Now, they clutched rifles. She had chosen to be with Ehsan Samalani, a decision that whether it was marriage or the intention to marry, defied her family's will. In the eyes of the local jirga, that alone warranted execution.

What followed was recorded on video and circulated widely online: Bano was granted her final request. She didn't beg. She didn't weep. She asked for something else.

"You are allowed to shoot me," Bano said to her brother in Brahvi, her voice even. "But nothing more than that."

She asked to walk seven steps. And she walked them.

It was a final act of grace, the kind only someone who has already made peace with death can muster. In a world that had stripped her of every right, to choose her love, her body, her future, she reached for the only freedom left: to choose the moment, the manner, the rhythm of her own ending.

The state registered a case only after the video went viral. No family member came forward to file a complaint. The Balochistan government took over the prosecution.

This is not the first such case in Pakistan. It will not be the last.

Honour killing, a term widely used but inadequately understood, is the practice of murdering individuals, most often women, who are perceived to have brought shame to their families through their personal choices. The reasons vary: marrying by choice, seeking divorce, choosing clothing, or even being a victim of sexual assault. The perpetrators are usually close relatives. In many cases, communities, and sometimes courts, respond with indifference.

The murder of Bano and Ehsan is part of a longer continuum of violence that operates with impunity across Pakistan. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 590 people, including 405 women, were killed in the name of honour in 2024 alone. These are only reported cases. The real number is likely higher, particularly in rural and tribal areas where access to legal remedies is difficult and cultural codes dominate.

The problem is not confined to remote villages. Nor is it limited to the uneducated. Some of the strongest defenders of these practices are men educated at elite institutions, fluent in international law, trained in diplomacy and debate. They have read Rousseau, Locke and Mill. And yet, they will insist that honour is a legitimate value system, one rooted in tradition, deserving of preservation.

Consider Nawab Akbar Bugti, an emblem of Pakistan's educated elite. He attended Aitchison College, the country's most prestigious school, and later studied at Oxford University, walking the same halls as Gladstone and Gandhi. There, he would have encountered Locke on liberty, Mill on utilitarianism, and Burke on the moral duties of the ruling class. Fluent in English, Persian, and the language of statecraft, Bugti knew the lexicon of rights and reason.

Yet in a 2006 interview with The Guardian's Declan Walsh, Bugti recounted how a couple eloped; the man was shot, the woman hanged with her own shawl by her family. "The job was done," he said. "Honour was restored."

"It's namus," he told Walsh. "You have to feel it. There's no English word. You don't possess these qualities."

In that moment, Enlightenment thought collapsed beneath inherited dogma. Bugti's response revealed a deeper truth: that for many, cultural norms stand outside the reach of critique. When tradition cloaks violence, even the best education can be reduced to a decorative gloss. This mindset, entrenched and widespread, is among the greatest obstacles to eradicating honour-based violence in Pakistan.

The roots of honour killing in South Asia are anthropological and sociological. In patriarchal societies where family reputation is closely tied to female sexuality, control over women becomes synonymous with control over communal identity. Anthropologists have long documented how notions of izzat (honour) and sharam (shame) are weaponised to police women's behaviour. These codes are enforced not only by male relatives, but also by women, elders, and the broader community. Honour begins with the individual but belongs to the collective.

The Pakistani legal system has historically enabled this violence. Until 2016, perpetrators of honour killings could escape punishment through a loophole that allowed victims' families to "forgive" the killers, who were often the same family members. Even after legislative reform through the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences in the name or pretext of Honour) Act, 2016, implementation remains weak.

Police officers often refuse to register First Information Reports, and trials can drag on for years without verdicts. Social pressure, lack of witness protection, and absence of forensic capacity all contribute to the low conviction rate.

Moreover, the state's selective engagement, reactive only when videos go viral or media coverage becomes intense, reflects a deeper institutional apathy.

It's easy to condemn what feels distant, a grainy video from a remote village, a headline about a jirga's verdict. We tell ourselves, we're not like that. But the mindset behind honour killings lives closer to home, in drawing rooms and dinner conversations. It's in the shame tied to divorce, the blame placed on clothing, the control masked as protection. These aren't distant customs; they're everyday ideas. And until we confront the belief that a woman's autonomy dishonours her family, the violence, whether physical or cultural, will go on.

If Pakistan is to truly remember Bano, it cannot stop at arresting her killers. It has to dismantle the mindset that made her death inevitable. Because on that quiet afternoon in Dagari, as she stood facing death, Bano asked for just seven steps.

And with those seven steps, she walked with more courage than the men who killed her, and more honour than the men who justified it. Step by step, she crossed the threshold between victimhood and defiance.

Bano walked seven steps. The rest of us are still standing still.