Acid Attack Victims Win

In November 2009, acid attack survivor Naila Farhat won the case convicting her spurned suitor, Irshad Hussein, making her the first woman in history to win an acid attack case in the Pakistani Supreme Court. Thanks to Farhat, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry, and a growing number of advocators and supporters, the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Act is currently being reviewed in the Pakistani Parliment for vote.

When Farhat was only 13 years old, she was attacked on her way home from school by Hussein and his friend, her science teacher, with acid. In minutes, she was a half-blind and disfigured victim of acid violence. For six years Farhat pursued her case in court, demanding justice for what was done to her. The schoolteacher was not charged; he is rumored to have bribed police and fled, a common occurance according to women's rights activists. Hussein was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay 1.2 million rupees (almost $15,000). However, after an appeal to the High Court, his sentence was lowered to four years in prison and 1.1 million rupees, and then lowered again to 1.1 million rupees and no jail time whatsoever. Farhat appealed to the Supreme Court where Hussein's original sentence was quickly reinstated.

The land-mark decision shamed the Pakistani Government into action. Chaudry took a special interest to the case and urged the adoption of national legislation to prevent and punish acid attacks by patrolling the sale of acid and imposing harsh sentences on perpetrators. Controling the sale of acid is difficult because it is so easily available; sold for under $1 a liter, it is used in household cleaning, and for processing cotton in rural areas. The law now up for vote would amend Pakistan's Penal Code by comprehensively defining "hurt" and "disfigure" and specifically listing all of the commonly available acids as dangerous substances. The law will increase the maximum penalty for those charged with acid attack from ten years imprisonment to a life sentence, charge substantial fines, and obligate perpetrators to pay for the victim's medical expenses. It will ban the sale of acid to those without a license, and increase the penalty of unlawful sales from 500 rupees (about $6) to 100,000 rupees and/or one year in jail for first time offenders.

Before the law can be voted on in the House, it must first be approved by the Council of Islamic Ideology, the constitutional body that advises Parliment and the government on sharia law. The potential conflict lies between conservative members who fear modernity is making women rebel and moderate voices among Ulema (Islamic scholars). Many activists fear the law will not pass because some conservatives overlook domestic violence on the basis of an interpretation of the Prophet Muhammed's view that a man cannot be punished for an injury that results while he is disciplining a family member. The Council's chairman, Muhammad Khalid Masood, gives reassurance, saying that the prophet's true meaning is misconstrued in acid attacks: "These are cases when [injuries] happen by mistake, because the intent [to harm] is not there. ...When you throw acid you cannot say it is by mistake."

Perpetrators of acid violence are most commonly family memembers of the victim, or rivals competing for the affection of the same woman. Non-gender based attacks are usually provoked by property disputes or arguments of a similar nature. According to the Acid Survivors' Foundation chair Valerie Khan, 50% of acid attack victims are women, 26% men, and the remaining children, who are not usually targeted, but merely constitute collateral damage. Shahnaz Bokhari, Chief Coordinator and Clinical Psychologist at the Progressive Women's Association in Rawalpindi, commonly known as the Women's Rights Terrorist, says she has encountered around 8,000 victims of acid attack since 1994. Her statistics, however, come only from Rawalpindi, Islamabad, a 200-mile raduis in the north of Pakistan. It is estimated that only 30% of victims come forth.