‘Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to live ...’

IHEU’s Member Organisation in Nepal HUMAN continues its fight against witchcraft.

HUMAN is concerned with reform of traditional, irrational and religious superstition prevailing in Nepalese society, and it has been active in highlighting social crimes perpetuated through superstitious practices. Witchcraft is a social disease not only in the Hindu world since times immemorial.

On August 2001, in the district of Mahottari, Simardahi VDC, 1500 rural Nepalese women were badly and inhumanly treated (several of them seriously injured), thousands more were insulted, humiliated, abused and tortured in the name of a so-called witch identification ceremony. It all started with the coming of a so-called healer from Bihar, India, who claimed he could identify witches. The healer was hired by the family of 16 year old Sanjay Saha who died suddenly (in fact due to an epileptic fit) to identify the “culprit”. To the beats of leather drums women were ordered to attend the ceremony; heavy monetary penalties of fifty thousand rupees were announced for those failing to attend. Ten thousand hapless women attended, several of them walking long distances. At the ceremony many women were named witches at random, many of them beaten brutally while the district administration remained indifferent.

This wound on our humanity had hardly healed, when a more cruel and brutal incident took place in Belaekadara VDC of the same district,

Mahottari. An old woman of 61 years age, Malechhia Devi, was killed on Wednesday the 26th of September 2001 by murderers who accused her of killing a three-year old child by casting a spell. According to the fact finding report prepared by HUMAN, the culprits were the Mr. Nawal Kishor Yadav, Bijo Yadav, Jeetan Yadav and Tularchan Yadav who brutally beat her unconscious and poured human excreta into her mouth. She died because no timely medical aid was available.

HUMAN’s report has now been submitted to the government as well as to the IHEU. The IHEU forwarded the report to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. HUMAN also submitted a memorandum to Nepalese parliamentarians about the issue. Even though the Parliament took note of the matter and the Parliament’s Speaker ruled that the government should take immediate action against the culprits. He also asked the government to provide immediate relief and compensation to the victims of the incidents. Unfortunately, till now the government has not yet acted on the Speaker ‘s directive.

HUMAN appeals to all Humanists world-wide to help rehabilitate some of the traumatized and brutalized victims of these terrible crimes.

Ganga Prasad Subedi is General Secretary of HUMAN and a population studies expert