Eighteen-year-old Shumi Akhtar hasn’t left her hospital room since she arrived eight months ago. Her already-abusive boyfriend threw acid over her after she turned down his proposal of marriage. Now the sunlight and the world outside are unbearable.
Last night’s Unreported World (Channel 4) followed the two weeks photojournalist Giles Duley – who brings with him his own experience of life-changing injuries, after a near-fatal encounter with an IED in Afghanistan which rendered him a triple amputee – spent with Shumi at a clinic in Bangladesh. It is run by the Acid Survivors’ Foundation (founded in 1999 in response to the growing prevalence of this particular kind of violence against women) and specialises in the injuries inflicted on an average of one woman a week there.
Many survivors of attacks are now on the staff, trying to help new victims cope with their physical and psychological scars. Even allowing for cultural differences, it is noticeable how much they touch, hold and stroke their patients, as if only flesh-to-flesh contact can assuage the pain not just of being burned but, frequently, of being abandoned by ashamed families who feel the women brought it on themselves. They are metaphorically and literally, save for the gentle helping hands at the ASF, untouchable. One of Shumi’s aides was burned when she was eight after her family had turned down a request by a 40-year-old man to marry her. She has not seen them, save two of her 17 siblings, since.
It was as moving and compelling and enraging as you would expect, given the subject matter and the Unreported World pedigree. Duley did a fine job of letting his experience inform rather than overwhelm both the story and his interactions with Shumi – no small feat when he must still, a mere four years on, still be processing such a traumatic event.
Time and space could have – should have, I think – been found for a little more context. With such specific, gendered violence at the programme’s core, it feels simplistic – even a little dismissive – to cover the background with a single line at the top of the programme (“Women in Bangladesh are going out to work more and more. And the men can’t cope”). The source of suffering needs to be brought out into the light.
