Letters from Renu and the WFN staff . . .

A diary of social work in Nepal . . . September 2006

The Letters from Renu on these pages detail an ongoing saga of abuse. WARNING: these letters have graphic descriptions which may be disturbing. These are stories of real people in terrible trouble. The good news is that there are many individuals who are working to set the world right in Nepal. WFN is one of the groups seeing to it that something is being done to help.

Dear Tara didi,

I was out from Kathmandu, I went to the Eastern part of Nepal for two purposes.

First, I needed to support two women who were beaten very badly after being blamed of being witches;  They needed support from us. The second reason  was a wedding ceremony of our friend who is founder and editor of Nay Sensor( new world) News paper. He is very good, Social worker.  He is also advisor of the WF in eastern part of Nepal.

This picture and the one below (showing bruises from the beatings)are of an innocent woman named Dhukur who is a survivor of witch victim abuse and the other picture is the  husband of Dhukur( He is very sick and also old.)

I would like to write a little about those women who were victims of witch abuse. They are from Charpane Jhapa district. Both of them are very poor. One woman was thrown out by her husband and family from their family.  She is living in a very small hut close to the road and working all day in different places. She is illiterate. She has no regular job. She has to struggle every day to find the work. Some time people hire her to work on their farm, some time she carries stone or brick to build houses.

Dhukur is very poor. She is landless, She has two sons but both of them have moved out  when they married.  They are not supporting their parents. The husband of Dhukur fell form very high place ( from the roof of the house his neighbor) He is 86 years old too.

Dhukur and another women named Pan Davi were victims of  witch abuse. Their neighbors and relatives used very abusive words to them several times and tortured them mentally several times. On seventeen June they were beaten very badly, They were beaten in different places in the village - but on the same days.

When they were injured, our district office in Jhapa informed the WF ( Tulsa Kharel and her group member) supported them and took them to hospital. There was a lot of talk about what had happened, but they did not find a legal solution . So they requested that I visit them and also find ways to create awareness on this issue.

We brought their cases to the police office, but Nepal has no laws against witch hunting so we could not punished the perpetrators. The police officer was positive. He asked lots of questions of the abusers. The abusers were kept (6 of them) for three days in the custody of the police.

WF helped bring the women to hospital and paid for their health checkup and purchased their medicine. The WF district office, Jhapa, discussed a lot about how to protect women from the accusations and abuse of witch hunting. Among the various tools is the family visit. Visiting the women often, asking each about the others (to build concern for each other) regularly, and supporting their children, when if possible. Many ways of offering support were discussed.

Both women are very happy and feeling very safe seeing the presence of several women, talking about them, dealing with the police office, and so on. A women said she feels very protected because of the Women's Foundaton.

Yours Sincerely,

Renu Sharma