Colombia’s wave of acid attacks is a relative anomaly in Latin
America, where the tactic remains rare — despite entrenched sexism and
high levels of violence against women across the region. Perpetrators
are overwhelmingly men, while victims are mostly women.
Acid
throwing is common in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Uganda. But
the place where the trend has received the most international attention
is Pakistan, where at least 160 attacks were reported in 2014 and as many in the first four months of 2015.
Yet
in Colombia, the annual number of acid attacks is around 100, according
to one prominent activist — which would make the per capita rate in the
South American country, with its 48 million population, nearly twice
that of Pakistan, where 199 million people live. (These are incomplete
figures, however, which could only tell part of the story.)
As he signed the bill, Santos paid tribute to the victims, saying:
“Despite the human misery that is hidden behind these acts, it is
admirable to see how in the end the inner strength in the souls and
hearts of the victims triumphs.”
Previously, Colombian law treated
acid attacks as causing “personal injuries” rather than being
intentional violent crimes, meaning attackers faced light sentences. In
practice, just a handful of perpetrators were ever even put on trial.
Meanwhile,
the country keeps no national archive of victims, and many women don’t
even report their injuries as being the result of an acid attack, making
it impossible to know the true extent of the horror.
Gina Potes
was thought to be Colombia’s first acid attack victim, back in 1996. She
now runs a foundation to help victims called Reconstruyendo Rostros — Spanish for "Rebuilding Faces" — and welcomed the measure.
“This
is something that we have been working for for a long time,” she told
GlobalPost. “It is very satisfying to see it finally pass into law. At
long last, the authorities are taking this terrible crime seriously.”
But
she also warned that more needs to be done, calling for the state to
provide medical and psychological treatment for victims, and support as
they rebuild shattered lives.
“There are so many victims who are vulnerable and who are alone, who
can’t even afford the bus fare to see a doctor never mind the medical
fees,” added Potes, 39, who has undergone 26 reconstructive surgeries
since her attack. “And, of course, the law is not retroactive so this
won’t bring justice to those people who have already been hurt and had
their lives torn apart.”
Experts believe the root of Colombia’s
problem lies in a dangerous cocktail of misogynistic attitudes ingrained
in mainstream culture and high levels of violence following a
half-century civil war that killed more than 200,000. That conflict is
only coming to an end now through painfully slow peace talks between the
government and the armed Marxist rebels of the group known as FARC.
One
obvious historic marker of the country’s patriarchal culture is that
women did not get the right to vote until 1954 — trailing some 20 of
Colombia’s regional neighbors in Latin America which had already hit
that milestone.
Potes says 87% of Colombia’s acid attack victims
are women, while 90% of perpetrators are men. “Usually it is someone
from the victim’s inner circle, a husband or the father of her children,
who cannot accept being turned down or left,” she says. “The attitude
is ‘If I can’t have you, then no one else can either.’”
But it’s
not just spurned partners who carry out the attacks. In one prominent
2013 case, a construction worker took exception to industrial inspector
Elizabeth Ruales, 38, telling him to use proper safety methods, and
threw a bucket of acid at her, burning her face, neck, arms and legs.
Her attacker was eventually given an 18-month suspended sentence after the judge ruled that the man was “not a threat to society.”
That
kind of jaw-dropping leniency now appears to be over. But even more
than harsh punishments for acid attackers, activists like Potes hope
that attitude changes in Colombia will make this horrific crime a thing
of the past.
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost. Its content was created separately to USA TODAY.
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