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> Women in the Menstruation Huts: Variations in Preserving Purification
> Customs among Ethiopian Immigrants
> http://www.jstor.org/stable/20487899?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
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> Message: 12
> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2017 09:33:54 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect
> To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
>
> Subject: [Marxism] Shunned During Her Period, Nepali Woman Dies of
> Snakebite
> Message-ID:
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> (So whatever happened to the Maoist revolution that was supposed to
> transform Nepal?)
>
> NY Times, July 10 2017
> Shunned During Her Period, Nepali Woman Dies of Snakebite
> By RAJNEESH BHANDARI and NIDA NAJAR
>
> KATHMANDU, Nepal ? Every month when her period came, Tulasi Shahi was
> sent to stay in her uncle?s hut, the one where he keeps his cows tied
> up, in a village in the Dailekh district in western Nepal. This month
> was no different. She slept there on wooden boards laid on the ground,
> in keeping with a tradition known as chhaupadi that sequesters
> menstruating women from their families.
>
> But while she was in the hut on Thursday night, Ms. Shahi, 18, was
> bitten by a poisonous snake. Her mother took her to a shaman, but he
> could not cure her. Then she was taken to a health clinic, but workers
> did not have the antivenom medicine she needed, her family said.
>
> Ms. Shahi died early Friday morning.
>
> ?If she was given proper treatment, she would have survived,? said
> Kamala Shahi, a cousin of Ms. Shahi?s who works at a government health
> post. ?She died because of superstition.?
>
> The Supreme Court of Nepal ordered an end to chhaupadi, which is linked
> to Hinduism, in 2005. But it is still practiced in many of Nepal?s
> isolated villages, particularly in the west. A bill is pending in
> Parliament to formally criminalize the practice. Many people in rural
> villages believe that menstruating women are impure and can bring bad
> luck on a household. Under the chhaupadi tradition, the women are kept
> from taking part in normal family activities and social gatherings or
> from entering houses, kitchens and temples.
>
> A Nepali government survey in 2010, cited in a State Department human
> rights report, found that 19 percent of women in the country aged 15 to
> 49 practiced chhaupadi, and the proportion rose to 50 percent in the
> midwestern and far western regions.
>
> The practice has its dangers: Women must often brave winter cold or
> summer heat in rude huts where they are vulnerable to human and animal
> intruders.
>
> Anita Gyawali, an official responsible for women?s issues in Dailekh,
> said that another teenage girl died in the district about six weeks ago,
> also from a snakebite, while staying in a menstrual hut. And a
> 15-year-old girl in another part of the country died in a menstrual shed
> in December; local news reports said she was killed by smoke inhalation
> after lighting a fire in the hut to keep warm.
>
> ?Young girls feel guilty,? Ms. Gyawali said. ?They are forced to follow
> this tradition by their parents and religion.?
>
> Ms. Shahi?s family said she did not object to the practice. ?I think my
> sister accepted it and followed it because it has been continuing since
> ages,? said her brother Prem Shahi, 24. ?I think she accepted it because
> my grandmother followed it and my mother followed it.?
>
> Others pointed to lack of education as a factor.
>
> ?I heard about the incident of Tulasi Shahi,? said Rukmini Acharya, 17,
> who lives in the area and said she had observed a less extreme version
> of the practice. ?I am very sad about it. Girls who stay in a hut face a
> lot of difficulties. It?s all because the parents are illiterate.?
>
> Radha Paudel, a Kathmandu-based women?s rights activist who focuses on
> menstrual health, said Nepal needed to enact legislation specifically
> outlawing the practice, and to do a better job of spreading awareness of
> its dangers.
>
> ?There are so many organizations working on this issue,? Ms. Paudel
> said. ?Our president is a woman, the speaker is a woman, and our chief
> justice was a woman. But girls are dying in the shed, and they have to
> live like animals. It?s shameful.?
>
> Rajneesh Bhandari reported from Kathmandu, and Nida Najar from New Delhi.
>
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