Years After Acid Horror, Suicide Stirs Pakistan

Dr. Valerio Cervelli, a plastic surgeon who led the work, said it was difficult at first “because her lower lip was attached to her torso, she had no neck, and her eyes were permanently open.” Complicating matters, she ignored postoperative advice. “She was so headstrong, so independent,” he said.       
Still, things improved: by the 38th operation, in early 2011, Ms. Younas could move her mouth and one eye. Her once strikingly beautiful face, although still charred, had regained some of its shape. She had learned Italian, befriended local traders and co-written a memoir, “Il Volto Cancellato,” or “The Erased Face,” which brought in some income.       
She ventured outside fearlessly, armed only with a bawdy sense of humor ingrained on the streets of Karachi. During a soccer match in Rome, when the noise grew too loud, Ms. Younas turned to fellow fans and “threatened to throw her false ear at them,” Ms. Durrani recalled with a chuckle.       
But the grueling operations extracted a heavy physical and psychological toll, said Rachele Bonani, an aid worker who helped her. And, Ms. Bonani added, “she always wanted to go home.” But a return to Pakistan was out of the question for Ms. Younas, partly for security reasons: friends worried that her life would be in danger.       
She vented her frustration at the local Pakistani Embassy. About two years ago, according to several accounts, Ms. Younas turned up, demanding to meet the ambassador. A heated confrontation developed during which “security was called,” a senior embassy employee said in an e-mail. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Ms. Younas was persuaded to leave the building voluntarily; Ms. Durrani insists that she was forcefully ejected by the Italian police, who later apologized.       
“She gave up on justice,” Ms. Durrani said. “She gave up on the fact that she could ever come back. She knew how she would be treated.”       
Since Ms. Younas’s death, those close to her have recalled signs of deep-rooted depression. Her son, Noman, said he was not surprised by the suicide, because she had tried twice before to kill herself.       
“It was a bad time for her, because of a lot of things,” he said in a telephone interview. “I guess she had her reasons.”       

http://archives.dawn.com/2007/09/10/nat23.htm

Now in his first year of high school, Noman, 15, is in the care of an Italian family. He says he does not intend to return to Pakistan.       
Pakistani advocacy workers point to promising signs that future acid victims will be treated better. Legal reforms enacted last year mandate stiff penalties, including a minimum 14-year sentence and a one million rupee ($11,100) fine for attackers. A new Acid and Burn Crime Bill, due to come before Parliament soon, provides for better police investigations, trials and victim treatment. Further off, there are plans to regulate the sale of nitric and hydrochloric acids.       
Some experts, however, worry that a notoriously weak police force and lower-court system in Pakistan could undercut any legal revolution. “It’s a systemic problem,” said Faisal Siddiqi, a lawyer who works with acid victims. “Regardless of the laws you bring, if you are poor and a woman, you will not get justice from the courts in Pakistan.”       
Ms. Younas never saw “Saving Face,” but was buoyed by the acclaim it received, friends said.       
On Monday, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, the filmmaker, said: “The tragedy is that it took a film and a suicide to bring the problem of acid violence to the national consciousness. Sometimes it takes extremes for a nation to wake up to what’s wrong within its borders.       
“Now I just hope that the man who is responsible for this will face justice,” she added.         
Despite the film’s success, Ms. Younas’s friends say it could not overcome her sense of isolation, heightened by the pain that the attacker who had stolen her beauty and crushed her life remained free.       
“Had she been a politician’s daughter or a general’s daughter, then we would have seen what would have happened,” Ms. Durrani said. “But who was going to fight for a dancing girl?”       

http://archives.dawn.com/2002/07/31/nat26.htm

I am stunned , there are hundreds of acid attacks on girls in Pakistan  according to the archives of DAWN newspaper of Pakistan

There are Millions in India....

according to the Times Of India...

Nuff in Berbice..... ::rofl::

[quote author=ketchim link=topic=65242.msg409489#msg409489 date=1334072790]
There are Millions in India....
[/quote]  and so this is justified then in Pakistan  because it happens in iNDIA . these cowardly attacks on women must be condemmed  wherever they happen

FAKHRA'S EARLY STRUGGLES
At 13 years old, Fakhra was sold by her mother to an older man with whom she had Nauman. Fakhra never met her own father, and her mother, addicted to heroin, prostituted herself in the streets of Karachi.
Fakhra's brother battled many years against drug addiction before eventually being killed by his dependency.
However Fakhra spoke very fondly of the father of her child. The two never got married, but Nauman's father taught her how to read and write, use cutlery and speak properly. He also introduced her to the possibilities of being a dancing girl.
He helped Fakhra leave the extreme poverty of the streets of Karachi. Fakhra found herself in Dubai, performing for the Sheiks of the Emirates in the most sumptuous palaces. In return, she received outrageous sums of money, jewellery and a lavish lifestyle she never thought even existed.
When she met Bilal Khar, Fakhra thought her life could change again. But she soon realised her marriage wasn’t going to be the fairytale Bilal promised her. Constantly subjected to violence and humiliation and not allowed to live with her own son, Fakhra decided she to be be a dancer again. However this was cut short by the attack that was to end her life as she knew it.

Patricia Lefranc was left horrifically disfigured after her jilted lover sprayed sulphuric acid on her face.

The 48-year-old lady spent three months in a coma.

She lost the sight of one eye, became partially deaf, and had to endure 86 surgical operations.