Nepalese teenager dies after being banished to shed for menstruating
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Nepalese teenager dies after being banished to shed for menstruating
Roshani Tiruwa, 15, believed to have suffocated after being forced to stay in dilapidated animal hut during her period, in custom outlawed a decade ago
A 15-year-old girl in western Nepal suffocated to death after being forced to stay in a poorly ventilated shed because she was menstruating, in an age-old Hindu practice banned over a decade ago, police said on Tuesday. Roshani Tiruwa’s body was discovered by her father early on Sunday in mud-and-stone hut in Gajra village in Achham district, 440km (275 miles) west of Kathmandu.
“While we are waiting for the post-mortem report for the cause of her death, we believe she died due to suffocation,” police inspector Badri Prasad Dhakal told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Sanfebagar, the main town in the area. “She had lit a fire to keep herself warm before going to bed in the shed, which had no ventilation,” he added.
The girl is the second to die in the region this month due to “Chhaupadi system” – a practice in which Hindus banish menstruating girls and women to animal sheds for the duration of their period, as they are thought to be impure. It was outlawed in 2005, but sporadic reports of women and girls dying in attacks by wild animals and from snake bites, or being raped while they are in seclusion in these sheds, indicate the archaic practice still continues in Nepal’s remote west. Some communities believe they will suffer misfortune such as a natural disaster if women and girls are not sent into isolation when they menstruate. They are also not permitted to drink milk and are given less food to eat during their period.
Activists say the government’s response to stamp out practices such as the Chhaupadi system and child marriage in the Himalayan nation has been inadequate. But officials say they are battling age-old attitudes that cannot be changed overnight.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/21/nepal-teenager-dies-banished-shed-menstruating
Nepali girl dies due to banned menstruation practice
A 15-year-old girl suffocated to death after she was made to sleep in a shed because she was menstruating.
The chhaupadi tradition is said to put women at risk of attack by wild animals, disease, and rape [File: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters]The chhaupadi tradition is said to put women at risk of attack by wild animals, disease, and rape [File: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters]
A 15-year-old girl has died in Nepal's western Achram district after she was banished to a shed because she was menstruating, under an ancient Hindu practice that has been banned for more than a decade, police said. "We are investigating the case. We suspect that she died of suffocation from the smoke of a fire she lit to keep herself warm," local district inspector Badri Prasad Dhakal told the AFP news agency on Monday. Local media identified the girl as Roshani Tiruwa.
Some Hindus view menstruating women as impure and in parts of Nepal they are forced to remain in a hut or cowshed for days, a practice known as chhaupadi.
Truwa's father told Nepalese newspaper My Republica that she had had an evening meal at around 6pm on Friday and went inside the shed to sleep. When it was late in the morning and she had not been seen, he gave her a call from outside. "Then we saw her dead body," he said.
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Superstition
Under the chhaupadi practice, women are banned from taking part in normal family activities during menstruation and after childbirth, and can have no contact with men of the household. The Hindu tradition is common to all castes in the region. Women who violate the practice are blamed for crop failures, illnesses and sudden deaths of animals. There are previous reports of chhaupadi leading to deaths, attacks by wild animals, snakebites, diseases, rapes, poor mental health, and infants dying of pneumonia.
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A 2011 UN report estimated that 95 percent of women in Achham district follow it.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/nepali-girl-dies-menstruation-chhaupadi-161219090727200.html
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