WUNRN
By Mallika Aryal
KATHMANDU,
Dec 23 (IPS) - Just 40 kms away from the capital Kathmandu, in Thasingtole,
Lalitpur District, Kalli Kumari B.K., 46, a local Dalit woman, was mercilessly
beaten up. She was accused of being a 'witch', imprisoned in a shed and forced
to eat her own excreta
The
headmistress of a local school along with a local shaman accused her of
practicing witchcraft and tortured her for two days.
"They
kept hitting my head and my bruises. They fed human excreta and then they took
a blade out and started cutting my skin. I couldn't bear it anymore and was
forced to admit that that I am a witch so they would stop giving me so much
pain," said B.K. in a public forum here in
They let her
go when she accepted that it was because of her that the village cattle was
dying and signed a paper, which said that if any more animals died it was her
responsibility.
After being
freed, she rushed to the police and filed a complaint at the area police
office. For days the administration did nothing. After pressure from local
rights group the police finally apprehended the local headmistress.
However, the
accused was let off after she paid a fine. Now she has been reinstated at the
school and lives in the same village as B.K. "I live in fear, the people
who tortured me are still in this village, what if they come at night and take
me away again?" said B.K.
In Sunsari,
650 km south-east of Kathmandu, Jabrun Khatun, 26 was dragged out of her house
and beaten in the middle of the village. "They said I was a witch, that
because of me a lot of children were falling sick and beat me for hours. Then
they stepped on my chest and forced me to eat human excreta," said Khatun.
They
imprisoned her for days until local children let her out. She was all alone in
the family as her husband had recently left to work in neighbouring
In Kalilali,
far west
Gender
activists have been fighting for years to end this extreme form of violence
against women, but the problem is still common in the Tarai, the southern
plains of
"An
educated woman from higher-income family and higher caste never gets accused of
practicing witchcraft," said Indu Pant, gender advisor at CARE Nepal. Urmila
Bishwakarma of the Dalit media group Jagaran Media Centre has been documenting
cases of Dalit women who have been accused as witches and tortured. She said
that Dalit and other minority women are the most vulnerable because they are
socially, culturally, financially and politically backward.
Pant says
that the problem is exacerbated because the state is often missing in these
regions, so the victims have nowhere to go for help. "Even when they try
to seek help from the police they are often turned back because the police says
it is a personal matter and must be solved in the community. This culture of
impunity lets the perpetrators off the hook."
Spokesperson
of the Supreme Court Sri Kanta Poudel said that there is a legal vacuum when it
comes to punishing those who are involved in such crimes. "There are no
provisions of compensation or reintegration of the victims into the society,
that is the weakness of our justice system," admits Poudel.
Human rights
activists like Kapil Shrestha say that it is our great shame that in this day
and age, we are still indulging in beating women up, feeding them human
excreta, torturing them until they have no self-confidence, treating them like
animals. He adds that by saying we do not have laws to punish those who are
involved in the witch-hunt is irresponsible.
"We are
a party to CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination on all forms of Discrimination
Against Women), which has strict provisions against gender-based
violence," said Shrestha adding, "we may not have designed our laws
according to the convention but once a country ratifies an international
convention we have an obligation to follow their provisions."
Bishwakarma
of Jagaran Media Centre says that if the state is really serious about
addressing this problem strict laws need to be devised and implemented so that
no perpetrator gets away.
"The
government announced that Nepal is untouchability free but that is not
enough," he said, "Translate the words into actions, make laws, and
implement them properly so that this extreme form of violence against women
stop."
Bishwakarma
said that the state must immediately look into proper ways of rehabilitating
those who have been accused and tortured as witches. "It is wrong to
expect victims like Kalli B.K. to live in the same community as the perpetrator
– isn't it the state's responsibility to make every citizen feel safe, so why
is Kalli still scared that those who tortured her are going to come back?"
In the
long-run, Bishwakarma said that the state must ensure that there's
representation of the hitherto backward community in decision-making levels so
that these issues are addressed in policy-making levels as well. Activist
Shrestha said massive education programmes need to be launched in the areas
where this practice is prevalent.
"This
needs to be our curriculum so that children learn early on about superstitions,
it must be included in police training manuals, and the organisations need to
move out of the urban areas into the field and work with communities. It is
about changing the behaviour and mindset of our society and it may take some
time and it is definitely not going to be easy," said Shrestha.
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.