Kalli Biswokarma was tortured by neighbors in her village in Nepal for two days and forced to eat human waste before she finally gave in and confessed to practising witchcraft.
Those who beat, punched and kicked the 47-year-old mother of one accused her of casting evil spells on a schoolteacher who had fallen ill.
“I was victimized because I am a poor woman,” said Biswokarma, who belongs to the Dalit community — the “untouchables” on the lowest rung of Nepal’s rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.
“Around 35 people came to my home and took me away. They trapped me in a cow shed and forced me to eat feces and drink urine,” she said in Pyutar village, 40km south of Kathmandu. “The next day they cut my skin with blades. I could not bear the torture and I confessed to being a witch just to save my life.”
HUNDREDS YEARLY
Hundreds of Dalit women are thought to suffer a similar ordeal every year in Nepal, where superstition and caste-based discrimination remain rife and most communities still operate on strict patriarchal lines.
Rights campaigners say the perpetrators of such crimes are rarely brought to justice, with police viewing them as matters for the community to sort out itself.
Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has pronounced an end to violence against women this year as Nepal makes the transformation from traditional Hindu monarchy to modern secular state.
But authorities admit they face an uphill struggle.
“Superstitions are deeply rooted in our society, and the belief in witchcraft is one of the worst forms of this,” said Sarwa Dev Prasad Ojha, minister for women and social welfare. “Such traditional practices cannot be wiped away overnight.”
The Women’s Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) says it has documented at least 82 cases in two years in which women who were tortured by neighbors on charges of witchcraft.
Nepalese law prohibits violence against women, but Dahal said it was rarely enforced, particularly when the victims were from marginalized groups.
‘NATIONAL SHAME’
Nainakala Thapa, head of the government’s National Women’s Commission, called the practice a “national shame.”
“Women who belong to low-caste groups are made scapegoats because they cannot defend themselves,” Thapa said.
Thapa said that when a person dies or falls sick it is often spiritual healers who are the first to make accusations of witchcraft.
“It is easy to identify a low-caste woman and brand her a witch,” she said.
For Biswokarma and her family, now back in their home village after a stay in a women’s refuge in Kathmandu, the stigma persists.
“I am still afraid because some of the people who tortured me are still in the village,” she said. “I have lost my dignity, but I have not given up hope. I will fight for justice.”
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