Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labor of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com.
Don’t forget to check out our SHOP and our Podcast
Recommended Reads:
The Kohistani Video Murders
In May 2010, a seemingly harmless video in which five girls sang and clapped was allegedly shot in a house in Palas, Kohistan, at a wedding in the North of Pakistan. The video shifted from the girls to Bin Yaser and Gul Nazar, two brothers, who danced and clapped along. By 2012, the video had been leaked and circulated into the local community; making the girls and both the boys a subject of humiliation by those around them. A Jirga - a local tribal council, was called to discuss the punishment for those involved in the video. The boys and the girls in the video were from different tribes, and for them to mix and even talk to each other was, in the Jirga and their tribes’ perspective, strictly forbidden. But the punishment would not only be on the basis of this inter-mixing, but also because according to them, the simple act of singing and clapping had brought shame to their tribes. Their crime was simply celebrating a wedding. And so, the Jirga’s leader, Javed Azadkhel, allegedly sentenced everyone involved in the video to death.
Soon after Azadkhel’s alleged declaration, Afzal Kohistani, a brother of the two boys in the video, rushed to the police to file a First Incident Report (FIR), claiming that the girls involved in the video had been mercilessly killed by their families. Afzal’s narration of the events also state that the girls were thrown boiling water at, and were subjected to other unimaginable abuse and torture by their families for a whole month prior to being murdered. The FIR, however, was not lodged and registered at that time. Whether this was due to the police being afraid to defy the Jirga’s decision and authority in an area lacking formal legal enforcement, or because the local authorities, without investigating, simply agreed with the Jirga's ruling and chose not to file the report, remains unclear. After being disregarded by both the Jirga and the police, Afzal went further south, and managed to call a press conference in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from where his story commenced.