Honour killings in our part of the world have sadly become synonyms as 24NewsHD TV channel reported that 25 women were killed in Ghotki district in the name of family honour during the last one year.

Ghotki located in upper Sindh is part of the region which is notorious for karo-kari – the term used in Sindh for such killings.

24NewsHD also reported that a total of 84 people were killed in the district during this period over land, tribal and other disputes.

The poor and law order situation can be gauged by the fact that an important leader of Mehar group Mumtaz Ali – a member of Ghotki District Council – was also shot dead in broad daylight two months ago.

Despite the opening of schools in far-flung areas and the increase in literacy rate, this unending trend of honour killings shows that there is no change in social attitudes in Pakistan which is reflected in incidents of honour killings reported in media. And the actual situation is even worse as many deaths either go unreported or are closed without proper investigation.

If we look at the official figures, the Sindh Police in February this year in a study revealed that a total of 769 people, including 510 women, had been killed in the province during the past five years.

And most disturbing part is that the conviction rate stood at a mere two percent against the acquittal rate of 20.9 percent.

This pathetic conviction rate obviously encourages the tribal elders and family members to pass such orders, knowing that they would not face any consequences.

But the honour killings are widespread across the country. In a latest incident, two girls were killed in Waziristan over an old video clip that went viral on social media recently.

Later, the two killers were arrested – father of one of the girls and brother of the other.

Meanwhile, these killings were instigated by a tribal elder who had asked the people in a social media post to eliminate the two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQuUzPvvrIE