A man in Pakistan told police after his arrest that he murdered his 16-year-old daughter “for honor” after she refused to delete her TikTok account, the Agence France-Presse reported on Friday based on a police report
"The girl's father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her," a police spokesperson told AFP.
The man is alleged to have killed his daughter on Tuesday, following her refusal to delete the video-sharing app.
While the man is now confessing to the killing, the girl’s family had initially tried to “portray the murder as a suicide,” CBS News reported, citing police in the city of Rawalpindi.
Honor killings in Pakistan
The app has been deemed controversial in the conservative Muslim country, and Pakistani telecommunications authorities have threatened to ban the app over what they deemed “immoral behavior."
TikTok-related murders have become increasingly common in Pakistan. Last month, 17-year-old influencer Sana Yousaf was murdered after she rejected the romantic advances of an adult man on the site.
Earlier this year, a man also confessed to murdering his 14-year-old daughter over her use of TikTok, which he claimed compromised her “honor.”
In 2022 alone, there were 384 cases of honor killings in the country, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Despite only acknowledging the 38 deaths as honor killings, a 2019 Human Rights Watch report estimated that there are 1,000 honor killings in Pakistan annually.