I have been working as a freelance journalist and photographer for many years, and I have written about 10 articles focusing on poverty and marginalisation in Bangladesh. These articles have been published in Norwegian newspapers in order to create awareness of poverty in third world countries.
The most difficult articles I have written, were about the women who have had their faces and bodies disfigured for the rest of their lives: Men who has had their proposal rejected, husbands, boyfriends, relatives or others, have thrown acid at women to ensure a total physical destruction of women who will never look the same again, ever.
Initially, I did not feel I would have the courage to face acid survivors and I was very hesitant: How could I look at their faces without staring at the scars? How should I act, what questions could I ask without offending them? Would it be traumatic for them to tell their stories and answer my questions? How would they feel about me taking their pictures and publish them?
After sharing my doubts with my good friend; eminent photographer Shafiqul Alam Kiron, who has published a book of photos of acid survivors, I became more courageous. As an active board member at Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), he convinced me that the interviews I would conduct would be with women who would willingly talk with me, and who had previously shared their stories.
In 2017 and 2019 I met a few women that was admitted to the ASF clinic for a follow up treatment from acid attack. The interviews went well, and they were later on published in Norwegian newspapers.
Most of the women, and some men, come from poor families. Some of them are disabled because of the attack, some of them are blind and not able to work or live in a society, often villages, where the options for employment for women are very limited.
After I moved back to Bangladesh at the end of 2021, I had a meeting with ASF regarding information about areas where ASF is not receiving funding: Education of the children of survivors as well as financially support given just after the survivors was admitted to the hospital was mentioned.
With the cooperation of Survivor-staff at ASF, Tahmina Islam, the fees for consultation is given as a scholarship to children of acid survivors as well as distributed to women in hospitals who have just been attacked by acid.