At first glance, Bably Akter looks like any other nine-year-old Bangladeshi girl, dressed in a brightly colored pink and turquoise skirt and top trimmed with silver sequins.
A matching headband conceals her left ear, badly deformed and the only obvious sign she is the victim of an acid attack, a practice rampant in the country, used mainly in domestic disputes and against women and children.
As her mother, Parul, recounts the story of how Bably’s father put drops of acid on different parts of her body every day for five days when she was a baby, the little girl lifts her skirt to reveal a large scar on her legs and feet.
PHOTO: AFP
“Her father wanted a son. He’d been violent towards me before Bably was born but it was not until day five, when he actually fed her acid I realized something was seriously wrong,” Parul, 26, said.
She complained to the police but charges were never laid.
“We ran away and spent two years at the Acid Survivors’ Foundation [ASF] hospital where Bably had a lot of plastic surgery on her mouth. She still needs more operations,” Parul said.
With her broad grin and her love of dancing, Bably speaks about her dreams of one day becoming a doctor to help others in the South Asian nation.
“She says she doesn’t remember what happened but sometimes she cries for no reason. Her speech is a little bit impaired and she gets teased at school,” Parul said.
The Dhaka-based ASF says most victims of acid attacks bear obvious physical scars, which make them pariahs. Bably is one of the lucky ones.
Efforts in Bangladesh in recent years to curb the practice mean cases are slowly declining, but human rights campaigners say acid remains too easy to buy.
“Acid throwing is rampant in the southern and northern parts of Bangladesh where it is used for dying the fishing nets and in the handloom industry,” ASF doctor Imtiaz Bahar Choudhury said.
Last year 179 people — three-quarters of those women and children — were victims of acid violence in Bangladesh, with 20 cases already recorded for this year, the ASF said. The most common reasons for the attacks are disputes over property and dowry payments, and unrequited love where spurned suitors try to disfigure women who reject them.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week one woman in five around the globe has been a victim of rape or attempted rape, and that in some countries one woman in three has been beaten or subjected to some kind of violent act.
“Violence against women is an abomination. I’d like to call it a crime against humanity,” Ban said ahead of International Women’s Day yesterday.
The last major study into domestic violence in Bangladesh found that about 60 percent of women had been physically or sexually abused.
About 19 percent of those had experienced severe physical violence, defined as being hit with a fist or object, kicked or dragged, beaten up, choked, burnt, or threatened with a weapon.
Poverty, especially hunger, played a significant role in determining the degree and frequency of violence against women at home in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where 40 percent of people live below the poverty line.
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8 is “women and men united to end violence against women and girls.”
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS