[On Feb. 28, Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy, a Karachi filmmaker, won Pakistan’s first Academy Award, for
“Saving Face,” a documentary that focuses in gritty detail on victims of acid
violence like Ms. Younas. Despite the film’s disturbing topic, the Oscar gave
Pakistanis a welcome shot of national pride, while focusing attention on a
social ill.]
By Declan Walsh
 |
Associated Press
From the right, Ms.
Younas before and after she was disfigured
in an acid attack
that she blamed on her then-husband |
KARACHI, Pakistan — Fakhra Younas went under the surgeon’s knife 38 times, hoping
to repair the gruesome damage inflicted by a vengeful Pakistani man who had
doused her face in acid a decade earlier, virtually melting her mouth, nose and
ears.
The painful medical
marathon took place in Rome, a distant city that offered Ms. Younas refuge, the
generosity of strangers and a modicum of healing. She found an outlet in
writing a memoir and making fearless public appearances. But while Italian
doctors worked on her facial scars, some wounds refused to close.
On March 17, after a
decade of pining for Pakistan, a country she loved even though its justice
system had failed her terribly, Ms. Younas climbed to the sixth-floor balcony
of her apartment building in the southern suburbs of Rome and jumped. She was
33.
News of her death
filtered back to her home city, Karachi. And by the time her coffin arrived for
burial, a storm of outrage had been whipped up — one framed by a glittering
Hollywood success.
On Feb. 28, Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy, a Karachi filmmaker, won Pakistan’s first Academy Award, for
“Saving Face,” a documentary that focuses in gritty detail on victims of acid
violence like Ms. Younas. Despite the film’s disturbing topic, the Oscar gave
Pakistanis a welcome shot of national pride, while focusing attention on a
social ill.
Acid is the preferred
weapon of vindictive men against women accused of disloyalty or disobedience.
Common in several Asian countries, acid attacks in Pakistan grew sharply in
number in 2011, to 150 from 65 in 2010, although some advocacy workers said the
increase stemmed largely from better reporting.
The death of Ms. Younas
galvanized the Pakistani news media. In Parliament, lawmakers vowed to take
action, while one political leader called for a criminal investigation into the
case to be reopened. But legal experts were skeptical that would happen,
because the man Ms. Younas long accused of the attack — her ex-husband, Bilal
Khar — was acquitted at trial nine years ago.
Unlike most men accused
in acid attacks, Mr. Khar comes from a wealthy, powerful background. His family
owns vast swaths of rich farmland in Punjab Province; his father, Mustafa, is a
former provincial governor; his first cousin Hina Rabbani Khar is Pakistan’s
foreign minister. In recent weeks, Mr. Khar appeared on television several
times to defend his reputation. “My hands are clean,” he said during one
broadcast.
The appearances won him
little public sympathy, with critics saying that the case exemplified how
Pakistan’s rich frequently evade justice. Yet there was a ringing contrast
between the howls of condemnation and the virtual silence that greeted Ms.
Younas after she was attacked a decade ago. And it raised a question: When this
clamor has receded, will Pakistan’s next acid victims stand a better chance of
obtaining justice?
Deep-rooted social
prejudice and misogyny were part of her story. Born to a heroin-addicted mother
on Napier Road, Karachi’s red-light district, by puberty Ms. Younas was a
working “dancing girl” — a euphemism for prostitute. She had a son when she was
15. Then, in 1997, at 18, she achieved the vice girl’s version of the Pakistani
dream: she married a client, Bilal Khar, who came from the other side of the
tracks.
But the marriage
collapsed after three years, amid allegations of domestic violence, and Ms.
Younas fled to her mother’s home on Napier Road. She was sleeping there in May
2000 when two men burst into the apartment; one cast a bottle of liquid over
her face and chest. Ms. Younas struggled and screamed, but it was too late: the
acid fused her lips, melted her breasts and destroyed one eye. During a
three-month stay in a hospital, she came close to death.
“She had two little
holes for her nostrils, and her mouth was so melted that only a straw could fit
in,” said Tehmina Durrani, a prominent Lahore figure who championed the case.
Ms. Durrani had her own reasons for tackling the Khars — she had divorced
Bilal’s father, Mustafa, and had written a searing memoir of the marriage
titled “My Feudal Lord.”
Other Pakistanis,
however, showed little interest in the case. Newspapers, even liberal ones,
gave the story scant coverage. Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s government dragged its
heels over issuing a passport to Ms. Younas, concerned that the case would hurt
Pakistan’s image.
Mr. Khar went on the
run, and was declared a fugitive in early 2002. But when the trial started a
year later, after Mr. Khar had been caught and arrested, the case quickly
crumbled. Although four witnesses testified to seeing him enter Ms. Younas’s
home the night of the attack, all later retracted their statements. Earlier,
they had complained of intimidation by Mr. Khar, but the judge paid little
notice, and in December 2003 he dismissed the case.
In one recent television
interview, Mr. Khar described himself as the victim of a “media trial.” He
pleaded for privacy to protect his three daughters, who, he said, were facing
awkward questions over the case at school.
“You should be
considerate about that,” he chided the host.
Ms. Younas was not
present for the acquittal in 2003; she had left for Rome with her son, Noman.
There, over a decade, she slowly rebuilt her life. The Italian government
granted her political asylum; the city authorities offered her an apartment;
and a Milan cosmetics company paid for her surgery.
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.”
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?”
Gaia Pianigiani and Elisabetta Povoledo
contributed reporting from Rome.
This article has been
revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 9,
2012
An earlier version of a web summary on this
article said incorrectly that the attack on Fakhra Younas was ten years
ago. It took place in May 2000.
