A photograph of Abdul Baqi taken after he was blinded by his father and brothers caused outrage in Pakistan after it was circulated on Facebook along with details of his horrific ordeal.

By Abdul Hai Kakar & Ron Synovitz @ RFERL.org, Jan. 22.

Abdul Baqi was blinded with a spoon by his own father and brothers at their home in southwestern Pakistan because he insisted on marrying a young woman that he'd fallen in love with.

"I can survive without my eyesight, but I can't live without love," Baqi recently told RFE/RL [....]says Baqi, 26, an ethnic Pashtun from the town of Loralai in the northeastern part of Balochistan Province. Baqi's horrific tale illustrates that women are not the only victims in Pakistan of so-called "honor crimes" -- a scourge of violence that has included acid attacks, blinding, and murder by relatives of victims accused of dishonoring their families [....] 

Baqi says four of his brothers who have ties to the Taliban bound him, beat him with batons, and held him down as they used the handle of a spoon to gouge out both of his eyes. He says one younger brother, who was 18 at the time and had just returned from fighting as a Taliban militant in Afghanistan, held his head down with his foot and declared he was an "infidel" because his relationship with the woman was "un-Islamic." [....]