According to official figures, there are around 200 acid-related crimes reported every year in Bangladesh. However, thousands of acid-attack victims find refuge at the Acid Survivor Foundation(ASF) in Dhaka, the capital, in any given year. Like Rahima, most victims are women who have spurned advances from men.
- Rahima Begum, a young woman in the village of Kaligonj in the northwest of Bangladesh, turned down the romantic advances of a neighbour and paid dearly for it.
- In the dead of night, while she was asleep, her neighbour poured acid over her face, leaving her disfigured for life.
- "I may be still alive but he took my life away, I have become the shame of my family and of my village. I have no where to go," she says.
- "The perpetrators have a strong mindset not to kill the person but to put the victim in a position that they suffer for life," Monira Rahman, the ASF's executive director, said.
- The effect is to rob a woman of her beauty, thus ensuring that she will never be admired again, she said.
- The survivors of these assaults suffer deep burns and most bear irreparable scars for the rest of their lives. Some disfigurement can be treated through surgery, however.
- The Bangladeshi government takes acid crime very seriously, and in the past decade has enacted many laws aimed at curbing the occurrence of this crime.
- In related story by Harvard Health Policy Review (HHPR) , in 2002, Eight-year old Babli was attacked by her own father when she was only an infant.He had purchased acid from a local shop and then poured it into his daughter's ears and over her feet.Her mother Ayeesha explains that he was angry that she had been born a girl.Despite the government's promises to take these cases seriously, Babli and her mother have little hope of seeing justice done.
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