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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNepal: Woman, sons suffocate to death in banned 'menstrual hut'
Nepal: Woman, sons suffocate to death in banned 'menstrual hut'
Many communities in Nepal consider menstruating women as impure and force mothers and daughters to stay in sheds.
The practice was banned by the Supreme Court in 2005 and a new law criminalised it last year [Al Jazeera]
A woman and her two sons suffocated to death in Nepal after she was forced to sleep in a windowless shed during her period, police said. Amba Bohara and her children are the latest victims of an age-old Hindu practice in the Himalayan country, that was banned more than a decade ago. Bohara, 35, and her sons - aged 12 and nine - had lit a fire on Tuesday night to keep warm in the freezing mud and stone hut, but were discovered dead the next morning by her father-in-law in western Nepal's Bajura district, police said.
The practice of "chhaupadi" banishes menstruating girls and women to animal sheds or huts for the duration of their period, when they are thought to be impure. "They died of suffocation because there was no ventilation and they had made the chamber airtight to beat the cold," police official Uddhav Singh Bhat told the Reuters news agency. "We pulled out their bodies with burned limbs."
Outlawed in 2005
The ancient tradition was outlawed in 2005, yet it remains prevalent in Nepal's remote west. The monthly exclusion leaves women at risk of snake bites, attacks by wild animals and rape.
Some communities fear misfortune, such as a natural disaster, if menstruating women and girls are not sent away. They are barred from touching a range of items - including milk, religious idols and cattle - and must eat frugally. Menstruating women and girls are also not allowed to meet other family members or venture out during their period. The custom has led to several deaths, despite the government introducing three-month jail terms and fines of 3,000 rupees ($27). Last year, a woman suffocated to death after she was banished; in 2017, a teenager died after a snake bite.
Human rights activists say the government's efforts to end the practice have been inadequate and urged tighter monitoring. "That a woman dies with her children during menstruation is one of the biggest tragedies," said Mohana Ansari of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
Officials say battling centuries-old attitudes is not easy. The NHRC said police needed to do more to enforce the law.
"Women will continue to die unless there are consequences for enforcing this tradition," said Ansari.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/nepal-woman-sons-suffocate-death-banned-menstrual-hut-190111055118784.html
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Nepal: Woman, sons suffocate to death in banned 'menstrual hut' (Original Post)
niyad
Jan 2019
OP
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)1. What a brutal, disgusting tradition!
These patriarchal cultures need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Women and children are dying because of their ignorance and superstition.
brooklynite
(95,007 posts)2. "outlawed in 2005" says something as well...
niyad
(113,963 posts)3. yes, it does.
area51
(11,944 posts)4. Damn it.
ismnotwasm
(42,028 posts)5. Horrible
And like so many traditions there are some indications that menstrual huts started out as a womans place of centering and power, then was completely perverted by patriarchal standards over millennia.
niyad
(113,963 posts)7. you are, of course, quite correct.
MineralMan
(146,351 posts)6. Women are treated as second-class citizens in most places, and as
animals in others. Disgusting. Even in the United States, they are not seen as smart enough to make their own reproductive choices. It is one of the worst things about humanity in general. We are often inhuman in our behavior.
Damn patriarchal societies!