Why do acid attacks happen

Reshma Qureshi was just 17 and on her way to a school exam when a group of men threw acid on her face.

Her older sister's abusive husband and two of his relatives were behind the attack.

"I had not even heard of acid attacks before," said Ms Qureshi, now 23.

"I came to know that there are many acid attack victims in India after I got attacked."

Ms Qureshi refuses to hide her face the way many acid victims in India are expected to.

Instead she is an advocate for fellow victims.

Ms Qureshi has released beauty vlogs, teaching survivors how to do the perfect cat eye and red lip — while also raising awareness about the scourge of acid attacks.

She was invited to model at New York Fashion Week in 2016 and has published a memoir.

But despite her brush with the world of high fashion, she still doesn't have what she really wants: a job.

"Here in India people react differently if I walk on the street without covering my face. They ask questions, stare at you and talk badly," she said.

"In the US people always smile at you. They never ask what happened to you, your face."

Ms Qureshi said many acid victims were attacked by their own husbands and needed to support their children.

"I appeal to companies to give them jobs. Do not reject them because of their disfigured faces," she said.

Women find acceptance in survivors' sanctuary

Ms Qureshi now works with a charity offering accommodation, support and legal advice to acid victims in New Delhi.

Make Love, Not Scars runs a shelter home for women whose lives have been destroyed by a crime that is on the rise in India.

About 300 cases are reported each year, but the real figure is probably closer to 1,000 according to Tania Singh, the CEO of Make Love, Not Scars.

The number of attacks is rising steadily in India.

"This could mean two things; number one that people are feeling braver and stronger and they come out and report the crime," Ms Singh said.

"Or number two, that more potential attackers are getting influenced, learning about acid and committing the crime."

In neighbouring Bangladesh, in contrast, acid attacks have decreased since new laws restricted the sale of common chemicals and the death penalty was introduced for attackers.

The glacial pace of India's legal system means even when attackers are charged, it can take between five and 10 years for a conviction.

"I don't see signs of it slowing down. As long as acid is easily available I only see it increasing," said Ms Singh.

"Acid is a weapon. You know how America is talking about guns? That's how acid is used in India."

'I am the only one who is actually punished'

Ms Singh said many of the acid victims who came to the shelter were attacked by the people closest to them.

Soni Devi was on the verge of becoming a police officer when she was doused with acid.

The 21-year-old had a gun licence and an acceptance letter to join the local police force.

But her parents had arranged for her to get married.

"In India when you get married, you have to live with your husband and his parents. So she went and joined his family, and the abuse just started," Ms Singh said.

Her husband and his parents demanded more dowry money, beyond what had already been agreed to at her wedding.

Her mother-in-law would wake her up at all hours to cook and clean, treating her like a slave.

She said they accused her of wasting money. Her mother-in-law would hit her for using too much dishwashing soap.

Her husband cut her hair off while she was asleep, as punishment for using too much shampoo.

In 2008, her husband and his parents held her down and poured acid all over her face.

"This is how I look now after 16 surgeries. Earlier it was really bad," she said, touching rivulets of raised flesh on her face and neck.

"I always wanted to be a policewoman. It was my dream. It was an unfulfilled wish."

Instead, Ms Devi spent the next 10 years mostly inside her mother's house, locked inside a room whenever guests came over for fear of scaring them with her disfigured face.

"I was in complete state of despair at that time, I was even thinking of ending my life," she said.

She tried to get a job but was always rejected because of her looks.

"When I got rejected by employers I decided to go to college for higher studies," she said.

"I went to three or four colleges but again got rejected. They told me that my presence could affect their college's reputation."

'He wants to make sure no-one else can have her'

Eventually Ms Devi left her village in Uttar Pradesh for New Delhi to live in the facility.

She has made great leaps in her life since she was attacked and lost her dream of joining the police force.

She now works at the acid victims' shelter in Delhi, earning a living as an administrator.

But her husband has not been punished.

"I have been fighting my case since 2008. A court found my attacker guilty and handed over seven years of imprisonment. But he is out on bail, roaming freely," Ms Devi said.

"I am the one who is actually punished. I am facing social exclusion, harassment and torture."

Tania Singh said women were often seen as somehow responsible for their own assault.

"In India we are such a patriarchal society, we don't really have healthy relationship between men and women because boys and girls are not allowed to interact normally when they are younger," she said.

She said more Indian men need to understand consent.

"If he wants a woman and she does not fit his ideal desire of what a woman should be, or if she tries to leave him, then he attacks her with acid," she said.

"Because he can't have her, so he wants to make sure that no-one else can have her."

A spate of acid attacks has earned London the dubious recent distinction of being called “the acid capital of Britain.” There have been more than 100 acid attacks reported in 2017 alone, with at least one a day in the city, and there are suggestions the true figure is much higher.

There’s a common misconception that acid attacks take place only in developing countries. They are, in fact, a worldwide phenomenon. Acid attacks have been reported in the U.K., Canada, Italy (27 registered assaults in 2016) and other industrialized countries. Approximately 1,500 acid attacks are recorded worldwide annually. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Cambodia and Uganda are countries with the highest reported incidence.

More than two-thirds of recent victims in the U.K. are men. But globally, 80 per cent of acid attack victims are women and girls. Acid violence is categorized as a form of gender-based violence because gendered roles and hierarchies within families and society not only motivate perpetrators to commit the crime, but also provide them with a sense of impunity.

Attackers aim to disfigure victims

Perpetrators usually intend to disfigure rather than kill their victims. The patriarchal reasoning that a woman’s appearance is her only asset often drives acid violence. Even in the U.K., where most victims are men, a gang member admits quite easily in a YouTube documentary produced by VICE that although he has attacked both men and women with acid, he would “prefer to use acid on a girl nine out of 10 times” because “they love their beauty.”

Acid attacks are often specifically used to ruin a woman’s future romantic prospects, her career, financial security and social status. This perverse logic for acid attacks appears to hold water everywhere in the world. In 2008, Katie Piper’s ex-boyfriend hired an attacker in London to specifically throw sulphuric acid on her face to make her unattractive to other men and destroy her modelling career.

Perpetrators of acid violence are almost always men, and toxic masculinity —the desire to permanently victimize someone while demonstrating his own power and brutality —is almost always the underlying cause regardless of whether the victim is a woman, man or transgendered person.

Boys, men, need strong education programs

None of the policies and interventions aimed at responding to acid violence have engaged meaningfully with this fact. Proactive prevention strategies must involve sensitizing men and boys to the effects of gender-based violence, including acid attacks, and incorporating them into prevention activities.

Such approaches should be prioritized – or at least simultaneously implemented – as reactive strategies such as policing acid sellers and purchasers, and seeking longer jail sentences for perpetrators, which countries like Great Britain, Italy, Bangladesh and India are currently pursuing.

Perpetrators use acid because it is easy to purchase, easier to use than knives or guns, and because it has devastating consequences upon victims. Perpetrators also use other corrosive substances to disfigure their victims. This is true for recent attacks in the U.K. and in Montreal in 2012, when Tanya St-Arnauld’s ex-boyfriend used a household cleaning liquid to attack her.

This means that in countries where acid is not widely available or expensive, perpetrators will find destructive alternatives (kerosene, for example) that have the same disfiguring effect. Keeping purchase records of such common products will be difficult, if not impossible.

Governments and acid violence prevention NGOs have advocated for social, medical and legal reforms that have assisted in improving health, education and training, human rights, laws and psychosocial services for acid attack survivors. But to date, none of them have developed programs that authentically acknowledge or address the root cause of acid violence.

In some countries, state responsibilities have been supplemented or even replaced by NGOs, even though the latter cannot replace the former’s role in protecting citizens. Stronger state involvement is critical not just in service provision to survivors but also in prevention.

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