Last month, cousins Jameel Muhtar and Resham Khan were out celebrating Ms. Khan’s 21st birthday. While sitting in their car at a traffic light in East London, they were attacked with acid, in what was eventually treated by the police as a hate crime. The attack, which left both with life-changing injuries, horrified many in Britain. The attack provided a tragic reminder not only of the rise in hate crimes taking place in Britain in recent months, but also another rising problem: acid attacks.
It’s a little-known fact outside the country, but Britain has one of the higher per capita rates of acid attacks, according to the London-based Acid Survivors Trust International, which treats the country as one of the global hotspots (others include India, Pakistan, Columbia, Bangladesh and Uganda). On Friday, five attacks were carried out in northeast London, with one victim suffering “life-changing injuries”. At least 454 crimes, involving corrosive substances, took place in London in 2016 alone, up from 261 the previous year. There have been over 1,000 acid-related crimes in the capital in the past five years.
There have also been a large number of incidents in 2017, including the April attack when acid was thrown at people in a night club in east London, injuring 20. Other recent incidents include an attack on a Chinese family with acid in the London neighbourhood of Islington. Unlike in other countries, where acid attacks can often largely impact women and relate to domestic violence and honour attacks, in Britain, men account for nearly twice the number of victims as women (most perpetrators are also men). As elsewhere, the use of acid is often highly personal in nature, with the attacker aiming for the victim’s face.
Weapon of first resort
While acid has been used for a huge range of attacks, many, including ASTI, believe that part of the reason behind the rise of attacks is their increased use in gang warfare, as tough restrictions on knives and other conventional weapons have impacted what people are able to access. “What appears to be the case is that acid attacks are now being used as a weapon of first resort, and that young people are switching from knives to other forms of violence… it is also being picked up by street gangs,” says Professor Simon Harding, a lecturer on criminology at Middlesex University.
Acid remains easy to purchase, despite repeated calls to restrict access to it. (The use of acid in British gangland warfare is nothing new. Fans of Graham Greene may recall Pinkie Brown, the anti-hero of Brighton Rock, carrying a vial of ‘vitriol’). “You could go to a DIY (do-it-yourself) store now and buy acid or corrosive substances in quantity and strength that is far more than you could ever need. You can pay cash, there is no register for you to sign, the retailer has no details of you, and you can walk out and do anything with it,” says Mr. Harding, who believes greater restrictions, including an end to cash payments and the introduction of a register, are some of the changes urgently needed. Since the attack on the cousins, over 360,000 people have signed a petition, calling on the government to tighten restrictions on the purchase of acid. Calls were renewed following Friday’s attacks with the government saying it was working with police to see what more could be done.
Still, the accessibility of acid cannot alone explain why it’s become such a pervasive problem in Britain. Mr. Harding believes far more data needs to be gathered on the attacks. “It’s been a problem in some form or another since Victorian times, though was used rarely. Now it seems to be used for everything and anything… . It’s back and it’s in fashion, which is a great tragedy.”
