Ethiopia acid victim shows many women are at risk

By Andrew Heavens

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Kamilat Mehdi was walking home after dark with her two sisters when a man stepped out of the shadows and threw sulphuric acid in her face.

The acid hit the 21-year-old's eyes, nose, mouth, forehead and chest, splashing onto the faces and backs of her sisters beside her, burning flesh wherever it touched.

Though an isolated case, the attack has horrified Ethiopia's reserved and conservative society and cast a searing light on a hidden culture of violence against women.

"This isn't just a crime against Kamilat," said Assefa Kesito, Ethiopia's minister of justice, who visited her bedside.

"This is a crime committed against the state of Ethiopia. A crime committed against my daughter, my sister, my mother."

The attack -- allegedly by a man who had been stalking Kamilat -- came amid recent advances for women's rights in Ethiopia. But official improvements are just part of the story.

A 2005 report by the World Health Organization found just over 70 per cent of Ethiopian women surveyed who had ever been in a relationship had suffered some sort of physical or sexual violence. Sixty-five per cent said it was acceptable to beat a wife for not finishing her housework.

Dr Elaine Rocha, a professor at Addis Ababa University's Institute of Gender Studies, said this was the first acid attack she had come across in Ethiopia, but added it fits a pattern of violence against women in the country.

"It is only the most extreme cases like this that ever come out into the open," she added. "A woman is taught to tolerate abuse from a very, very early age. We could be talking about beating, abduction, harmful traditional practices like genital mutilation. The only time she might talk about it is when her life is at risk."

Kamilat is now being treated in a specialist hospital in Paris, France -- sent there by the country's richest man, entrepreneur Sheikh Mohammed Al-Amoudi, who stepped in to pay for her treatment amid reports her life may be in danger.

"It's hard because every day they do something, and there's no anesthetic," she told Reuters at the Addis Ababa hospital where she was treated before being moved to France.

RISING TREND?

Acid attacks against women have been recorded in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, three cities in Britain and Uganda, according to the British charity Women at Risk. Some people fear they may be on the rise.

Ethiopia has made significant advances to protect women's rights in recent years: it has its first Minister of Women's Affairs and overhauled legislation on rape, female genital mutilation and other offences.

"There have been big advances. But there is still a problem with enforcing these new laws," said Mahdere Paulos, executive head of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association.