February 12, 2010
According to Agence France-Presse, the murderers of an eight-year-old girl were finally apprehended this week. The tragic incident occurred in early December of 2009.
"The circumstances of the killing in early December
suggest the girl was sacrificed," local police official Narhari Adhikari
told AFP from Rupandehi district in the south of Nepal.
The child's throat had been slit and her body pierced with a sharp weapon. Local media reported her blood was found inside a brick kiln along with religious offerings of money and food.
"We have arrested four people including the owner of the brick kiln on charges of murder. Two of those arrested confessed they killed the girl as an offering to the gods to bring good fortune to the business," he added.
Nepal outlawed human sacrifice in 1780, but experts have long insisted that it is still practiced by some communities in backward rural areas.
"Some people still believe sacrificing human beings will appease the gods, improve their fortunes and raise their social status," said Chunda Bajracharya, professor of cultural studies at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan University.
The general Nepali public are horrified by such primitive and barbaric practices, but the incident should serve to remind the public how far Nepal still needs to come in protecting its children’s rights. Bonded child laborers and child slaves still exist in Nepal. Some children are sold by their parents for as little as $40 to middlemen, who sell them to private households where they are forced to do domestic chores up to 16 hours a day. Others migrate with their parents to unsupervised industries, such as brick factories, where the children are put to work as donkey handlers or brick carriers. Still other children are lured away from their parents by despicable agents who promise the parents that their offspring will be given a good education – but once in the custody of the agents, false documents are created to “prove” that they are orphans and, ultimately, end up in adoption centers that cater to wealthy Westerners, particularly from the United States, Spain, Italy and France. (The latest Hague Conference report just censored Nepal’s continuing lax adoption practices.)
One final note: Rupandehi district, where the eight-year-old girl was cruelly sacrificed, also boasts the site of the birthplace of Nepal’s most famous son. Siddhartha Gautama, the historic Buddha, was born in Lumbini, not too far from where the girl was slaughtered. Lumbini is one of Nepal’s major tourist attractions. It’s a deeply sad irony – lost on tourists and the Nepali government alike – the latter of whom are too busy fighting among themselves to rectify the cruel superstitions and lack of education that feed into and allow such horrifying practices to remain a reality in the hinterlands.
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