Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Reuters News Service
By SHAKESPEARE SHIL
DHAKA (March 18, 1999 12:06 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A Bangladeshi man with a score
to settle against a woman can buy his revenge for as little as
60 cents a bottle. Acid has become an increasingly common weapon used against women
in this poverty-stricken country, where destroying a girl's face
appears to have become a socially acceptable way to get even.
Jilted men use acid against women who have dared say no.
Other disputes are settled the same way. Nothing better, they
seem to think, than to erase the features of an enemy's wife or
daughters.
Police say 180 women were burnt in attacks with sulphuric
and hydrochloric acid last year, up from 163 in 1997.
Womens' rights activists and the victims themselves say they
are paying the price for resisting unwelcome advances, or for
bitter family feuds over dowry or property.
"The offenders throw acid to destroy the bodies of women
and shatter their dreams for not allowing the criminals to abuse
them physically, or for the women's inability to bring handsome
dowry from their parents," lawyer and activist Sigma Huda told
Reuters.
Writhing in pain in a Dhaka hospital bed, Peara Begum, 28,
said her sons' teacher threw acid in her face when she refused
to go out with him.
Two beds away the faces of sisters Helen, 17, and Sufia, 15,
are scarred beyond recognition.
They said a man crept into their thatched hut one December
night and emptied a bottle of acid over them after Helen and her
guardians refused his marriage proposal.
"He would not have dared do it if I were a man," Helen
said.
Women carry 'no weight'
Conservative, predominantly Muslim Bangladesh expects its
women to fit into age-old stereotypes, increasingly creaky
under modern pressures.
"Women are subjected to such crimes as they carry no weight
in this society," Huda said.
Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest countries and it
lacks specialist burn units. Even if it had them, the cost of
treatment would be beyond the reach of all but a few victims.
But now charitable groups who sponsor reconstructive surgery
are providing a ray of hope.
"It's heaven sent as reconstruction surgery takes some 25
to 30 hours of operation in seven to eight rounds over 12 to 18
months involving large amounts of money," said Samanta Lal Sen,
a plastic surgery consultant at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
"Bangladesh has only four to five hospitals handling burns
patients," said another doctor at DMCH. "At this hospital even
seriously burnt patients have to wait for years to get admission
and treatment."
Medical aid from abroad
Corpora Dermostatica, an organization of Spanish plastic
surgeons, is now treating 20 severely burnt patients from poor
families for free.
Six are being treated near Valencia at an average cost of
roughly $10,000. "After their return by July, others will be
sent to Spain in batches," Sen said.
Other organizations have brought medical staff to
Bangladesh.
Dhaka's Monowara Hospital took the initiative in bringing in
a five-man medical team from the Netherlands that operated on 30
victims, mostly women, in February and March.
"I want to bring smiles to the faces of some victims,"
said Mir Mohammad Imam Hossain, director of Monowara Hospital.
"The trauma stems from excruciating pain and unbearable
shock compounded by social rejection even by their own
families," he added.
A British surgeon is in Dhaka treating patients at DMCH, and
an Italian team treated 50 people over two weeks in January.
Legislation in the form of the Women and Child Repression
Control Act of 1995, which sets the death penalty as the maximum
penalty for acid attackers, seems to have had little effect.
Only 10 men have been caught and jailed.
