Before and after an acid attack
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Every day on World Now we choose a striking photo from around the world. Today we picked these jarring side-by-side shots of a Pakistani woman who suffered an acid attack and killed herself years later.
Fakhra Younus, who was allegedly attacked by her estranged husband and underwent more than three dozen surgeries, jumped off of a building in Rome earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.
Younus claimed that her then-husband poured acid on her while she was sleeping, angry that she had left him. Pakistani writer and activist Tehmina Durrani wrote:
I have met many acid victims. Never have I seen one as completely disfigured as Fakhra. She had not just become faceless; her body had also melted to the bone. Despite her stark and hopeless condition, the government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was not in the least God-fearing. She was provided nothing ... but disdain ... and trashed. ... Fakhra died again to remind the world that she had lived.
After the attack, Durrani fought to get her to Italy, which reportedly paid for her treatment.
The Acid Survivors Foundation, based in Islamabad, has estimated that as many as 200 acid attacks happen in Pakistan every year, The Times’ Alex Rodriguez recently reported.
Her suicide comes less than a month after Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar for a short film about acid attack survivors, ‘Saving Face,’ saying she hoped that the crimes would end.
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-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles