Parents kill daughter with acid in Kashmir

A mother and father in Pakistan-administered Kashmir killed their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid after seeing her talking to a young man, police said Thursday.

Local police officer Tahir Ayub told AFP the father, Mohammad Zafar, had had suspicions about his daughter Anvu Sha and became enraged when he saw her with a boy outside their home on Monday.

“Zafar beat her up and then poured acid over her with the help of his wife. She was badly burnt but they did not take her to hospital until the next morning, and she died on Wednesday,” Ayub said.

Doctor Mohammad Jahangir of the state run Kotli hospital confirmed the death, saying the girl was brought to hospital in a “very critical condition” with almost 70 percent burns.

Anvu Sha’s married elder sister alerted police and demanded they investigate the incident in Khoi Ratta district, 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of the state capital Muzaffarabad.

“The parents have confessed, saying that they suspected the girl had illicit relations with a boy,” Ayub said. “We have registered a murder case against the girl’s father and mother.”

Pakistan is a deeply conservative country, where women, especially in poor rural areas, enjoy few rights and protection by the police.

Such so-called honour killings are common in much of Pakistan, with thousands of women burned, disfigured or maimed in similar attacks every year, according to human rights groups. Such attacks are relatively rare in Kashmir, however.

Zohra Yusuf, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), said the case was a “classic” example of a family dispute turned horribly violent. “What is really striking is that there really is no regret among members of the family. Justice for the women is very, very rare,” she told the Guardian.

Last month, a schoolgirl in the north-west of the country was shot by militants from a local extremist group as she travelled home from school. Malala Yousufzai, 15, was a prominent advocate for girls’ right to education in Swat Valley, formerly controlled by the Taliban.

The movement, heavily influenced by its Afghan namesake, campaigned against allowing girls to go to school before being largely driven out of Swat by a Pakistani army offensive in 2009.

Malala was taken to Britain for treatment at a specialist centre at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, where her condition remains stable.

The shooting provoked an outcry in Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari said the attack was one “on all Pakistani girls” and the Chief of Army Staff, Ashfaq Kayani, called Malala an “icon of courage and hope”.

A Taliban spokesman said Malala had been targeted for trying to spread western culture, and they would try to kill her again if she survived.

Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who runs a girls’ school, said his daughter had defied threats for years, believing the good work she was doing for her community was her best protection.

However, the recent acid attack appears to be more mundane, and such incidents rarely attract top-level political attention.

The teenager appears to have been attacked by her parents after she spoke to a boy outside the family home.

“There were third-degree burns on her scalp, face, eyes, nostrils, both arms, chest foot and lower part of legs. Even her scalp bone was exposed,” Mohammad Jahangir, a doctor at the local hospital in Kotli, a town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said, adding that the mother had initially told the hospital their daughter tried to kill herseslf.

According to the HRCP at least 943 women were killed in 2011 by relatives seeking ostensibly to restore the family honour through murder. It marks a 15% increase on 2010, but could be due to increased reporting.

Though the parliament has passed laws aimed at protecting vulnerable women from abuse, implementation is at best patchy.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/02/parents-accused-kashmir-acid-attack