Acid attack
[5] Perpetrators of these attacks throw corrosive liquids at their victims, usually at their faces, burning them, and damaging skin tissue, often exposing and sometimes dissolving the bones.
[8][9][10] The long-term consequences of these attacks may include blindness, as well as eye burns, with severe permanent scarring of the face and body,[11][12][13] along with far-reaching social, psychological, and economic difficulties.
[22] A 2015 attack that involved throwing sulfuric acid on a man's face and body while he lay in bed caused him, among other serious injuries, to become paralyzed from the neck down.
[28] Some of the most common motivations of perpetrators include: Acid attacks often occur as revenge against a woman who rejects a proposal of marriage or a sexual advance.
In Europe, Konstantina Kouneva, a former member of the European Parliament, had acid thrown on her in 2008, in what was described as "the most severe assault on a trade unionist in Greece for 50 years.
[40][28] According to researchers and activists, countries typically associated with acid assault include Bangladesh,[41] India,[42][43] Nepal, Cambodia,[44] Vietnam, Laos, United Kingdom, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Pakistan,[45] and Afghanistan.
[49] Police in the United Kingdom have noted that many victims are afraid to come forward to report attacks, meaning the true scale of the problem may be unknown.
[5] NGOs provide rehabilitation services for survivors while acting as advocates for social reform, hoping to increase support and awareness for acid assault.
The organisation was founded in 2002 and now works with a network of six Acid Survivors Foundations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Uganda that it has helped to form.
[21] Disaggregated data was not available in the Nigeria study, but they reported that 71% of acid assaults resulted from an argument with either a jilted lover, family member, or business partner.
[21] In August 2013, two Jewish women volunteer teachers – Katie Gee and Kirstie Trup from the UK – were injured by an acid attack by men on a moped near Stone Town in Tanzania.
[55] On 27 March 2014, a woman named Natalia Ponce de León was assaulted by Jonathan Vega, who threw a liter of sulphuric acid on her face and body.
The new law, which is named after her, defines acid attacks as a specific crime and increases maximum sentences to 50 years in prison for convicted offenders.
[56] Victor Riesel was a broadcast journalist, specializing in labor issues, who was attacked while leaving Lindy's restaurant in midtown Manhattan in the early morning of 5 April 1956.
[96] In 1959, American attorney Burt Pugach hired a man to throw lye (an alkaline rather than acid substance, but with similar corrosive effects) in the face of his ex-girlfriend Linda Riss.
[101][102] On 30 August 2010, Bethany Storro, 28, of Vancouver, Washington, made national headlines after she claimed a stranger, whom she described as an African American woman, approached her on a walk and threw a cup of acid in her face, resulting in serious burns.
[49][113] A particularly high-profile case of this nature was the attack on Cambodian teenager Tat Marina in 1999, allegedly carried out by the jealous wife of a government official (the incident prompted a rash of copycat crimes that year, raising the number from seven in 1998 to 40 in 1999).
[7] Under Iranian law, victims or their families can ask a court's permission to enact "qisas" either by taking the perpetrator's life in murder cases or inflicting an equivalent injury on his or her body.
[126] In 2006–07, as part of a wider campaign to enforce Islamist moral conduct, the al-Qaida affiliated "Suyuf al-Haq" (Swords of Righteousness) claimed to have thrown acid on the faces of "immodestly" dressed woman in Gaza as well as engaging in intimidation via threats.
The Bhagalpur blinding case had made criminal jurisprudence history by becoming the first in which the Indian Supreme Court ordered compensation for violation of basic human rights.
[155] Kevin Hawkins, an American lawyer working for Vietnam-based VILAF law firm, notes the alarming prevalence of using acid in attacks, mostly for revenge and particularly in relation to failed romantic relationships or pursuits.
The current Vietnamese penal code stipulates that those who use acid to attack their victims face a charge of “intentionally injuring others,” rather than “murder,” which thus fails to discourage potential offenders.
[181] In July 2017, the BBC's George Mann reported that police statistics showed that: "Assaults involving corrosive substances have more than doubled in England since 2012.
[189] Mark van Dongen chose to undergo euthanasia months after he was attacked by his ex-girlfriend Berlinah Wallace during the early hours of 23 September 2015.
[192][193][194] In April 2017, a man named Arthur Collins, the ex-boyfriend of Ferne McCann, threw acid inside a nightclub across terrified clubbers in east London forcing a mass evacuation of 600 partygoers flooding into the street.
[197][198] In April 2019, a teenage girl, 13, and a woman, 63, were attacked by a man driving a white car, who poured sulphuric acid on them in Thornton Heath, South London.
[200] On 31 January 2024, nine people, including three police officers, were hospitalised after Abdul Shakoor Ezedi threw an alkaline solution on a car in Clapham, south west London.
On 17 October 1915, acid was fatally thrown on Prince Leopold Clement of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, heir to the House of Koháry, by his distraught mistress, Camilla Rybicka, who then killed herself.
[25] Research shows acid attacks increasing in many developing nations, with the exception of Bangladesh which has observed a decrease in incidence in the past few years.
The acids are used in traditional trades carving marble nameplates, conch bangles, goldsmiths, tanneries, and other industries, which have largely failed to comply with the legislation.
