Morm Nheb still remembers how her burnt flesh smelt when her ex-husband doused her face with acid, scarring her for life.
“It’s not a good smell,” said the mother-of-two, whose life has been a struggle ever since the day her ex-husband vented his anger over their divorce.
“There’s no going back after I was splashed with acid, and I am living like a dead body or a living ghost,” she said.
Photo: AFP
She is one of a growing number of acid burn victims in Cambodia, where the caustic liquid is easily and cheaply available — and attackers rarely brought to justice.
“We have difficulty in trying to get people to press charges because they are sometimes very fearful of the perpetrator,” said Chhun Sophea, a program manager at the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity (CASC).
In other cases, such as Nheb’s, the attackers go on the run and are never heard from again.
Since CASC opened its doors in 2006, it has helped around 300 people like Nheb by offering free medical and legal aid, counseling and skills training.
While there are no official statistics and many cases go unreported, Sophea said acid crimes are on the rise.
From January to last month, CASC recorded 18 attacks, in which 34 people were injured.
Sophea said that was “definitely an increase on last year,” when 33 people were treated overall, including some injured in accidents.
The Cambodian government has acknowledged the problem and is now in the process of drafting a law that would regulate acid sales and impose harsher sentences on attackers.
Drafting committee deputy chairman Ouk Kimlek said that convicted perpetrators could face between five years and life in prison under the new law, expected to be approved by the end of the year.
“Acid is a horrible thing,” he said. “We are looking to put those attackers in jail for what they have done to the victims, so we can curtail more acid crimes.”
Acid violence is a serious problem in some other Asian countries as well.
Bangladesh has seen 86 cases with 111 injuries in the first nine months of the year, according to the London-based Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), an NGO campaigning to make acid attacks a criminal offence in the country.
In Pakistan, women’s rights group the Aurat Foundation recorded 20 cases of acid throwing in the first half of this year.
The vast majority of victims in those countries are women, but in Cambodia men are just as likely to be a target.
“A lot of people think acid crimes are related to love triangle issues,” Sophea said.
However, that is not always the case, she said, and the motives for such attacks range from jealousy to anger and revenge.
“It’s not focused on the women here. Men have their anger against men also and women get really upset with husbands too. The anger and resentment builds up over time and they don’t have any way of letting it out,” she said.
Som Bunnarith, 39, a long-term resident at CASC, is one of these male victims.
He was burnt by his wife five years ago when they were arguing over his many late nights out. The attack left him blind.
“I cry. I am very sorry about my eyes,” the former salesman said.
He says he has forgiven his wife. They both work at CASC now, and he does not want to see her jailed.
Nheb, on the other hand, still wants justice.
She was unable to get her factory job back after the attack, and feels ostracized.
“When people look at you, whether it’s pity or just a curious look, it’s the most horrific thing,” she said. “When they see acid victims, they say, ‘If you take someone’s husband, here is the result.’ That infuriates me.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver