I’ve been wanting to write something about the rise in horrific acid attacks for some time but it’s just so difficult. The stories I read are heart-breaking. One particular story I read today is about an Iranian woman called Ameneh Bahrami, a victim of a vicious acid attack in 2004.

In all honesty though I don’t know what angers me more, the fact that this awful thing happen to her or the fact that she is battling to punish her attacker with the acid treatment. Yes you read correctly, she is willing to condone the blinding of Majid Movahedi with acid under a court order. A blatant violation of basic human rights! She says “if I don’t do this and there is another acid attack, I will never forgive myself for as long as I live” but hang on a minute two wrongs don’t make right. I know there’s a lot of people who’d suggest ‘an eye for an eye’ serves as some kind of justice (it certainly does in Sharia Law). but seriously people, you can accept pouring acid into some-one’s eyes is some kind of redemption! She is making a decision to accept the use of acid to disfigure Movahedi and so surely she’d never be able to forgive herself for that either for as long as she lives.

I obviously agree that this man should be punished, left to rot in a cell somewhere for a very long time but come on. Ameneh knows first hand what it’s like to have acid poured all over her, the pain she suffered I’m sure still plays on her mind day-in-day out, the surgeries shes needed and her recovery would certainly have broken her spirit yet to want to condemn someone else to this kind of treatment is unfounded, it’s completely absurd and it frightens me much more than the initial attack.

The Progression Women’s Association is an NGO based in Pakistan ‘fighting against the horror of violence against women’ and Shabnaz Bokhari is a remarkable woman. We need more of these!! There is also The Campaign and Struggle Against Acid Attacks on Women (no website), a voluntary organisation in Southern India striving to help victims of acid attack. Whilst alls I can do is raise awareness, these women risk their lives to speak out and I applaud their courage.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Iran and tagged as afghanistan, human rights, india, iranian, pakistan, terrorism, women. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.