Screenshot from video ‘Sana Yousaf, TikTok Star, Dead at 17‘ on YouTube by Entertainment Tonight. Fair use.

The murder of 17-year-old digital creator Sana Yousaf in Islamabad on June 2 has left me gutted. Like many Pakistani women around the world, I’ve been struggling to breathe under the weight of this loss. Because this isn’t just about Sana. This is about every girl who’s ever been told her life matters less, her voice is too loud, her freedom too dangerous.

Sana Yousaf, a vibrant young woman from Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, gained 800,000 followers on TikTok and close to 500,000 on Instagram by sharing culture, confidence, and joy. She inspired girls who looked like her. She celebrated her heritage, spoke about education, and simply existed in a digital space that is often hostile to women. That act alone, being visible, was enough for a man to believe he had the right to end her life.

She was murdered in her own home, allegedly by a man who had stalked and harassed her for months. He couldn’t accept her refusal. So, like so many others before him, he silenced her.

What’s perhaps even more chilling than the murder itself is what came after: the posts, the reels, the comments. So many suggesting she brought it on herself. That her visibility, her self-expression, her “defiance” justified her death. This isn’t fringe thinking. It’s mainstream, shared in WhatsApp groups, echoed by influencers, cloaked in moral and religious language. It reveals how deeply patriarchy runs in our society, where men are taught they are entitled to a woman’s silence, body, and obedience — and where a girl who dares to take up space becomes a threat.

Until we confront that mindset, in our homes, our schools, our timelines, justice will always come too late, if it comes at all.

Because this isn’t new. And it isn’t rare.

In 2016, Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media star known for challenging patriarchal norms, was strangled by her brother for the same reason: visibility, boldness, defiance. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 470 cases of honour killings were reported in 2021. But human rights defenders estimate the real number to be closer to 1,000 each year. In these killings, the victim is seen as having brought shame to the family, and her death is viewed as a way to restore its so-called honour.

That same year, 18-year-old Saman Abbas, an Italian-Pakistani girl, was murdered by her family in Italy after refusing an arranged marriage. Her body was found more than a year later, buried in a shallow grave near an abandoned farmhouse. In 2024, her parents were sentenced to life in prison. Her case became one of Italy’s most high-profile examples of how control over women’s bodies and futures travels across borders.

And this fear cuts across class and privilege.

In July 2021, Noor Mukadam, a 27-year-old woman from a diplomatic family in Islamabad, was brutally tortured and murdered by Zahir Jaffer, the son of one of Pakistan’s most powerful business families. Despite Noor’s social standing and overwhelming evidence, the trial dragged on for months under heavy public scrutiny. It took immense public pressure to secure a conviction. Many still fear it could be overturned on appeal, just as Qandeel Baloch’s killer eventually walked free.

These are only the cases we hear about. Most never make it past a police file, if they’re recorded at all.

But this is not only about murder. It’s about the daily suffocation of being a woman in Pakistan. Why are we so absent from parks, sidewalks, tea stalls? Not because we don’t belong there, but because we’re made to feel we don’t.

In April 2025, a viral incident in Lahore made this painfully clear. A woman practicing yoga in a public park was reportedly asked to leave and show her ID, after a man complained her movements were “inappropriate.” The guard sided with the man. That moment, a woman stretching under the morning sun, was treated as a threat. The story sparked brief debate, but for many of us, the message was old and exhausting: even stillness can be too much if you are a woman in Pakistan.

I grew up there. I know what it means to cross a street with your heart racing. To be ten years old and learn how to shrink. To be told that your body, your clothes, your laugh, your name on a door might bring shame. I carry that fear in my bones, even now, decades later.

In 2025, acid attacks continue, more than 200 a year, most against women. Say no to a proposal, ask for a divorce, be suspected of “dishonouring” your family, and you risk being scarred for life. The message is loud and clear: a woman’s life is only valuable if it is invisible, obedient, and silent.

For many of us, in Lahore, London, or New York, these killings are no longer shocking. They are devastating. But they are not new. That’s the horror.

We cannot normalize this. We cannot light candles and move on.

Sana’s death sparked protests and hashtags (#JusticeForSanaYousaf and #StopHonourKillings), but justice must go deeper than that. Her father’s request for justice from the authorities should never have been necessary. The rawness of her death, the silence from those in power, and the fact that so many saw it coming and did nothing make it impossible to move on.

I write this not just as an advocate of press freedom or a journalist. I write this as a Pakistani woman. As someone who still wakes up some nights in a sweat, remembering how it felt to walk home in fear. I write this as someone who believes girls like Sana deserve the world, not a grave.

Let Sana Yousaf be remembered not just for how she died, but for how she lived. For what she dared to do: take up space. Speak her truth. Dance. Be.

Let that be our revolution.