Rumana Monzur: Blinding Victim Fears For Her Future

Rumana Monzur

First Posted: 06/24/11 11:38 AM ET Updated: 08/24/11 06:12 AM ET

UPDATE: UBC has set up a website for donations for Rumana Monzur. Her friends and members of the community are also organizing a rally in Vancouver on Sunday at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

CBC -- Rumana Monzur is thanking her Vancouver supporters and asking them to pray for her recovery after she was blinded in an assault while on a visit to her native Bangladesh.

In her first Canadian interview since the June 5 attack, Monzur, 33, spoke to CBC News Thursday from her hospital bed in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

"My greatest fear? I won't get my vision back and I will have to be dependent for the rest of my life."

Her husband, Hasan Sayeed Sumon, is in police custody, charged in the assault, in which he also allegedly chewed off part of her nose.

PHOTOS: See Rumana Manzur And Her Daughter In Hospital

"I really appreciate people [in Canada] are so concerned about me," she said. "I would thank them all … for giving me moral strength."

In Bangladesh she had been visiting Sumon, her husband of 19 years, and their five-year-old daughter, after studying for nine months for a master's degree at the University of British Columbia, where she planned to return.

Monzur said she doesn't have the emotional energy to be angry now.

"I'm not in a position to feel anger," she said. "I just wish this doesn't happen to anyone else, because I'm suffering."

Sumon allegedly gouged Monzur's eyes with his fingers, with their daughter witnessing it.

"The last thing I saw, she was screaming and telling her father not to hit me, not to do that," Monzur said.

She said her concern now is for her future with her daughter.

"I'm trying to be very normal in front of her, but you can imagine, her mother is in the hospital, she can't even see anything … so i don't know what's going on in her mind.

"I can't plan anything, I can't do anything, I don't know what will happen to me and what will happen to my daughter."

UBC officials are sponsoring fundraising events for Monzur and said they are investigating ways for her to finish her studies.

A rally to raise funds for Monzur is scheduled outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Sunday at 3 p.m. PT.

With files from the CBC's Priya Ramu

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UPDATE: UBC has set up a website for donations for Rumana Monzur. Her friends and members of the community are also organizing a rally in Vancouver on Sunday at the Vancouver Art Gallery. CBC -- Ru...
UPDATE: UBC has set up a website for donations for Rumana Monzur. Her friends and members of the community are also organizing a rally in Vancouver on Sunday at the Vancouver Art Gallery. CBC -- Ru...
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oxjr
10:19 PM on 06/25/2011
Hoping they can restore her eyesight, even a little. And lets hope she gets the strength to be angry soon - because she should never go back to that monster.
01:57 PM on 06/25/2011
I just cannot understand a husband or a wife attacking each other like this under any circumstance, leave alone when they are parents of their child. I honestly do not. Did the husband even think what he is doing and its consequence? Like many things, this will remain incomprehensible.
Good luck to this lady, her child, and her family. Hope they get the peace and happiness that they deserve.
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Blodo
Time to build a better world
07:57 PM on 06/24/2011
Too bad medical science hasn't evolved to the point where she could be given her husband's eyes. All the best wishes in the world to her and may justice be done.
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CarlyQ
Without followers, evil cannot spread.
10:21 AM on 06/25/2011
That would be sweet justice, indeed.
01:59 PM on 06/25/2011
I am optimistic that the wonderful Doctors somewhere in the world (most probably USA) will come up with something to help her out medically. I am somehow optimistic about the human capacity to heal and help, with America at the forefront. For the sake of this lady and her family, I hope I am right.
01:41 PM on 06/24/2011
There truly are two victims here. A child witnessing one parent attack another like that is as scarred as though they'd been attacked themself.
02:00 PM on 06/25/2011
Very true. I am so shocked and can't even imagine myself as one of them.