In
a first for Nepal, the authorities have arrested a man who forced his
sister-in-law to sleep out in a cold hut during her period.
By Bhadra Sharma and Jeffrey Gettleman
A woman in a chhaupadi
hut in Nepal’s far west Achham District last year.
Credit Tara
Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times.
|
KATHMANDU,
Nepal — Every winter, in
Nepal’s snow-covered hills, young women keep dying because of a deadly
superstition.
The tradition here says that any woman who
has her period must be banished outside, to a cowshed or makeshift bunker, no
matter how cold or dangerous. This has been a ritual, believed to protect the
purity of the village, for as long as anyone can remember.
But this winter, someone was finally arrested
in such a death — a first in Nepal, according to law enforcement officials. The
case has set off a national debate about women’s rights, tradition, law and
punishment.
The Nepali authorities have jailed the
brother-in-law of a young woman who died in a shed this month in the remote
Achham District, in the far west. Many Nepalis have been disturbed by her
death, and one newspaper called the taboo — called chhaupadi (pronounced
CHOW-pa-dee) — a “national shame.”
Human rights activists have been pressing the
authorities to enforce a law that went into effect last year that punishes
family members who exile menstruating women from their own homes. Still,
villagers continue to do it, and many residents in Achham are upset that
someone was sent to jail.
“The police are just adding pain over pain,’’
said Krishna Budha, the chief of the village where the young woman died. “She
had gone to the hut on her own, taking part of our culture.”
But Nepal’s highest authorities intervened,
leading police officers to make the arrest. An investigation is underway.
In the past few weeks, villagers have been ordered
to destroy dozens of chhaupadi huts, and Nepal’s home ministry has threatened
to cut off government aid to families that do not comply with a law that bans
the chhaupadi ritual.
“The police did a good job this time,” said
Pashupati Kunwar, a leading anti-chhaupadi activist. “This has sent a warning.”
In Nepali language, chhaupadi means someone
who bears an impurity. Menstruating women are considered polluted, even toxic,
and from the earliest age, people here are taught that any contact with a
menstruating woman will bring bad luck.
An oppressive tradition has evolved around
this taboo, including the construction of a separate hut for menstruating women
to retreat to at night and then sleep in. Some of the spaces are as tiny as a
closet, walls made of mud or rock, basically menstruation foxholes. Each year,
at least one woman, usually more, and often young, dies in such a tiny space
from smoke inhalation, a snake bite or exposure to the cold.
On Dec. 2, it happened again.
Shortly after sunrise, according to police
officials, relatives of Parbati Budha, 21, sensed that something was wrong. Ms.
Budha, who lived in a mountain village about a two-day drive from the capital,
Kathmandu, was usually an early riser. She was known in the village as a
determined worker who was quite bright; she graduated from 12th grade, unusual
for girls from her village.
But on this morning, she did not emerge from
her chhaupadi hut. When her sister-in-law and brother-in-law went to check on
her, they found her on the shed’s floor, face down. Investigators said she had
built a small fire inside the hut to keep warm during the freezing night, and
died from inhaling too much smoke.
Ms. Budha had married about a year and a half
ago and moved in with her husband’s family, as most women do in rural Nepal.
Her husband worked in a sari showroom in neighboring India, and police
officials say it was her husband’s brother, Chhatra Raut, 25, who pressured Ms.
Budha to move out to the shed.
The news about Ms. Budha’s death quickly
spread, dismaying human rights activists. The activists, including Ms. Kunwar,
asked the local police to investigate, but the officers refused. The officers
said that nobody in the village had complained about the young woman’s death
and therefore there was no case.
But the activists kept up their pressure. And
in Kathmandu, the tide has turned against chhaupadi, which has become something
of an embarrassment to those trying to modernize Nepal.
After hearing what happened, Nepal’s attorney
general, Agni Prasad Kharel, stepped in and ordered police officials to open an
investigation, which quickly led them to the brother-in-law. The police
arrested Mr. Raut and are holding him in a small jail. He faces a three-month
sentence if found guilty of breaking the chhaupadi law, which makes it a crime
to pressure a woman into seclusion.
Kedar Nath Sharma, a spokesman for the Home
Ministry, said that any members of a family still practicing chhaupadi would
not get the usual government allowances for elderly people and single women,
concessional loans or recommendations for a school scholarship or government
job.
He said the Nepali government was serious
about ending this tradition once and for all.
“Women are dying in these huts,” he said.
Bhadra Sharma reported from Kathmandu, and
Jeffrey Gettleman from New Delhi.