The only South Asian among the Oscar winners this year was Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose A Girl In The River: The Price of Forgiveness won the award in the Best Documentary Short category. The film discusses the practice of honour killing in Pakistan. Congratulating Chinoy on the Oscar win, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that there was no place for killing in the name of honour in Islam.
Honour killing is a prevalent practice in Pakistan. The film revolves around Saba Qaiser, a 19-year-old girl who elopes with a man against her family’s will. Her father and uncle find her after the wedding. The men take her to a riverbank, and shoot her in the head, then put her body in a bag and dump her in the water. But, she survives. When the police, finally, find the perpetrators, she is forced to ‘forgive’ them as per the Diyat Law.
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After Chinoy’s film got an Oscar nomination, the film had a premiere screening in Islamabad at Nawaz Sharif’s home. The Prime Minister, along with members of Pakistan’s senate and national assembly, attended the screening. Subsequently, Sharif issued a statement declaring that honour killings had nothing to do with Islam, and called the issue “critical”. He also promised to “adopt all possible ways and means for removing this stain from our society”.