ADDIS ABABA, March 31 (Xinhua) -- A recent incident of gratuitous violence against a young woman in Ethiopia may help the East African nation finally emerge from a centuries-old approval of wife and woman beating as a cultural practice.

    Ethiopian society has been in an uproar since 21-year-old Kamilat Muhdin was hospitalized two weeks ago, victim of an attack by an alleged spurned admirer with sulphuric acid, which burnt off most of the flesh on her face, including her nose, eyelids and lips.

    The young woman, who works for her father at his store, was walking home with her two sisters in the evening, when a young man came out of the shadows, throwing a full jug of the acid on Kamilat, also splashing her younger sisters.

    "This isn't just a crime against Kamilat," said Assefa Kesito, Ethiopia's minister of justice, was quoted as saying at her bedside.

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

    The crime comes at a moment when Ethiopia is struggling to implement legislation against age-old practices such as wife beating, child marriage, and female genital mutilation, among others.

    Placed within the country's revised penal code, which came into force in May 2005, though modern and sensitive to gender issues, implementation of the legislation remains a challenge.

    A 2003 World Health Organization (WHO) study in rural Ethiopia showed, for example, that 71 percent of Ethiopian women surveyed, who had ever been in a relationship, had suffered some sort of physical or sexual violence. Further, the country's 2005 demographic and health survey showed that 81 percent of women accepted wife-beating, reflecting the low self-esteem of women in the country.

    "Violence against women is traditionally defined as physical assault," said Monique Rakotomalala, country representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for Ethiopia. "But in fact,it is common practice, permeating society and reflecting the deep inequalities among men and women."