WNN Features
An
unnamed girl, like this one in Bangladesh, faces the dangers of
crossborder sex-trafficking into cities inside India starting at a young
age. Image: Hannah Yoon
(WNN) Calcutta, West Bengal, INDIA, SOUTH ASIA: “It is
estimated that 200,000 Bangladeshi children have been trafficked for
sexual exploitation through the borders of [India's] West Bengal and
Assam States,” says a report from ECPAT International, which is working today to end child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes. “India is also used as a transit country for children trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh to Pakistan,” continues the report.
Sitting down with global human rights advocates
Equality Now,
a survivor of sex-trafficking in India named Ayesha tells a story of
exploitation and courage. It also shows that everyone has dreams for the
future that may start coming true.
When Ayesha was 13, she fell in love with a man who promised to marry
her and nurture her dreams of being the top po-music singer in
Bangladesh. She was never able to meet those dreams. Instead this man
betrayed her innocent trust. In disguise as any teenager’s boyfriend, he
was instead a seasoned and deceptive sex trafficker.
From Ayesha’s rural village in Bangladesh to Calcutta, India, known
in the region as Kolkata the largest city in West Bengal, the journey
can take hours by bus. Traveling through the night Ayesha and the man
she called her ‘boyfriend’ arrived in Calcutta for what Ayesha hoped was
a life filled with love and opportunity.
“My heart beat fast as we crossed the border in the darkness of
night,” said Aleysha. “I had never been to a big city like Kolkata, and
so I was distracted from the reality that I was leaving my family and my
school. I was terrified of being caught, but thrilled at the prospect
of settling down with the man I loved,” she continued.
But the man Ayesha loved sold her quickly and silently into one of
the most devastating environments that exists for a young girl – a
brothel.
In a country that has, according to the
BBC news in April 2013,
over 3 million sex-workers throughout the region, the percentage is
very low that one young girl coming from poverty trapped inside the
industry of sex-trafficking could ever find rescue.
“When we arrived, he told me he wanted to keep me safe with his aunt
until my parents stopped looking for us,” outlined Ayesha. “In a few
days, he would return for me. I was reluctant to see him go, but I
trusted his decision. That night, in the glow of moonlight, I saw girls
in short skirts and red lipstick standing in a line on the street. When a
man approached one of them, she led him into her house,” Ayesha added.
Prostitution is currently legal in India, but child prostitution
isn’t. Unbelievably brothels that sexually sell children continue to be
largely unchecked in India, even as with the rise in public concern in a
recent child rape case.
“The next morning, I asked his [my boyfriend's] aunt about these
girls,” outlined Ayesha. “She spoke to me in a hollow voice devoid of
emotion. I was told that I had been sold to her by the man I loved, and
that I would have to work off my debt by joining those girls each
night.”
Young, alone, and with no resources or friends in a unfamiliar and
intimidating city Ayesha tried in vain to escape. But it wasn’t that
easy for the girl who once had dreams, music and ambition. Now she would
only try to survive one-day-at-a-time.
“I tried to leave that dungeon many times. Memories still flash in my
mind of my hair being pulled, of being dragged through the dirt streets
by the brothel owner after a failed escape,” said Ayesha.
With a rising demand for virgins and sex-tourism in illegal
sex-industries worldwide the median age of entry into
forced-prostitution is getting younger. An alarming number of women who
have been sex-trafficked into India enter the industry now at the age of
11. Despite the high prevalence of underage forced-prostitution,
relatively very few cases of sex-trafficking are ever actually reported
or prosecuted in India.
“I still remember that moment when my whole world shattered into
pieces. I’ve been tortured and abused, and survived serious injuries
inflicted by buyers and pimps, but nothing hurts as much as the pain of
being deceived by the man I loved,” Ayesha admitted. “For a whole month,
I resisted the ‘aunt,’ who I learned was really a brothel madam. The
owner of the brothel grew impatient and raped me, as he did to all new
girls. He ordered the brothel madam to beat me with a leather belt every
day. I still bear these marks on my body,” Ayesha added. “I was kept
locked inside a room, with no food or water, for days.”
In spite of the continued suffering, arrest rates for people accused
of “kidnapping and abduction of women and girls” stands today at an
incredibly low
3.7 percent. But some of this may be changing.
India’s Supreme Court is now taking the issue of sexual exploitation
of women and girls and the use of pornography into their recent
deliberations.
While the issue of pornography and it’s possible link to violence
against women and girls brings with it a wide range of pro and con
debate, there is a growing international concern that some of the
production of global pornography may be rising from video recordings
made inside brothels located in India.
Increased use of smart phones throughout India is also be giving rise
to more viewing of international images that depict women and girls who
are being raped, say experts.
“Children work in brothels and some living away from home have been
used to make pornographic films,” outlines Jesse Eaves, the current
Senior Policy Advisor for Child Protection at
World Vision in Washington, D.C.
Another worry in India is that the use of force and violence depicted
in pornographic images and videos is on a steep rise inside the region,
say an increasing number of global child advocates.
“I believe that watching porn corrupts people, and many of the crimes
that happen to women, girls and children, such as sex-trafficking, are
mostly related to pornography,” said intellectual property rights
attorney Kamlesh Vaswani recently to the
New York Times.
Vaswani is the author of
a petition
that was presented to the Supreme Court of India asking that a complete
ban be placed through the Supreme Court in India on watching
pornography in the region. The argument for the ban is based on what
Vaswani describes as the “damage” to society in India as “…child
pornography is becoming more brutal and graphic.”
Without resources or enforced legal protections, teen girls in India
who are currently trapped in brothels face innumerable points of danger.
With the rise in local acts of sexual aggression, regional advocates
fear that women and children working inside brothels have no other
choice than to also be subject to increased levels of torture and
exploitation.
“To ‘break me in,’ I was raped several times a night for nearly a
month before the madam started selling me to men for money. It was
typical for me to have ten to twelve buyers every night. They were
usually abusive, treating me as if they owned my body. I have a deep
scar on my neck from a knife blade, which I got trying to save a young
girl in my house from being gang raped. It almost killed me,” shared
Ayesha.
“Children sold in brothels often suffer from illnesses, exhaustion,
malnourishment, infections, physical injuries, and sexually transmitted
diseases,” says the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010. “Living
conditions are poor and medical treatment is rarely available to them.
Children who fail to earn enough income generally are subject to severe
punishment such as beatings and starvation,”
While actual numbers are still difficult to obtain, government and
NGO – Non-Governmental Organization reports are revealing that hundreds
of thousands to millions of women and girls are currently being
prostituted in India, many who are forced laborers working off debt
bondage as victims of sex-trafficking like Ayesha.
“Later I would learn that my story was not unique. There were
hundreds of us—young girls from Bangladesh, Nepal and other parts of
India, sold into brothels. To keep us isolated the brothel owners forbid
us to speak to girls in other houses. They were very afraid that we
would form groups or befriend one another,” Ayesha added.
This
girl child inside a brothel located in the Sonagachi red-light district
of Calcutta, India was photographed by another child who also lived
inside the brothels in 2004. This was part of a photo-taking project for
Academy Award winning filmmaker Zana Briski. As one of the directors
for the award winning documentary film “
Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids”
Briski asked children living inside Songachi to carry around a camera
and take pictures of whatever they felt like showing from inside their
world. Image: NYCArthur
Ayesha gave birth to three children while in captivity.
When it became evident that the local pimps wanted to prostitute
Ayesha’s oldest daughter she knew it was time to get out once and for
all. But getting out wasn’t all that easy.
“I had three children in my captivity—two beautiful daughters and a
son. My children were my treasure, yet my love for them was often
accompanied by fear of what would become of them in the red light area,”
outlined Ayesha. “As my children grew, it became hard for me to provide
for them. My daughters had to drop out of school for financial reasons,
while my son, who suffers from autism, needed my constant attention.
The local pimps began to hint that I could make some money if I
prostituted my two daughters. However, the pimps never touched them. All
of the women in the brothel banded together to keep our children out of
prostitution.”
With a campaign from
Apne Aap, created in 2002 by former BBC journalist and filmmaker
Ruchira Gupta,
efforts to help Ayesha and her children to escape her traffickers met a
level of success. Instead of becoming a generational victim of
sex-trafficking Ayesha’s daughter is now, through professional career
training, able to support her family. With her current position as
supervisor for the
first all-women run petrol (gas) station in Kolkata Ayesha’s daughter has been given a new life.
One of filmmaker/journalist Ruchira Gupta’s most significant
contributions has been in international lobbying efforts that are still
working today to help shift the blame away from sex-trafficking victims
and on to the pimps, perpetrators and human traffickers in cases that
are handled locally by police and inside court rooms.
“Every single prostituted woman I have met, wants to save her
daughter from the same fate as herself. And they think someday society
will stand by them, and create laws to protect them and their daughters,
and hold accountable all those who rape, buy and sell her, says Rhira
Gupta, President of Apne Aap. “They are constantly betrayed. One of the
most repeated words that prostituted women use, is ‘Dhoka’. They feel
betrayed by family members who let them go, pimps and agents who sell
and buy them, clients who rape them and a society and a country which
does not stand by them. A country which has ignored their absence of
choices-simply because they were born poor, low-caste and girls.”
Amid the social outcry to end violence against women in India today,
recently-deceased former Supreme Court of India Chief Justice J.S. Verma
released
a new legal investigative report in January 2013 a comprehensive outline with measures needed to India’s Parliament.
“…whether it is of children or women for various purposes,
understated as immoral but in reality heinous. It now stands undisputed
that one of the main reasons for human trafficking is for Commercial
Sexual Exploitation (CSE) of these children and women,” said former
Chief Justice Verma’s report.
“Traffickers tend to work in groups and children being trafficked
often change hands to ensure that neither the trafficker nor the child
gets caught during transit. Different groups of traffickers include gang
members, police, pimps and even politicians, all working as a nexus,”
former Chief Justice Verma’s report added. “Trafficking networks are
well organised and have linkages both within the country and in the
neighbouring countries. Most traffickers are men. The role of women in
this business [in India] is restricted to recruitment at the brothels.”
Physical trauma, drug addiction, depression, and anxiety are often
the ‘after’ results of forced captivity under sex-trafficking.
Even after rescue a complex range of post-traumatic symptoms can
persist for those saved from forced-prostitution. The road back to
rehabilitation for many of the women who have suffered under entrapment
and forced sexual labour can be a long one.
“Even though I cried, screamed for someone to help me, people just
stood by watching, without even a look of sympathy,” continued Ayesha.
“Tears stream down my face as I think back to that day. If even one man
had tried to save me, my life would have been changed. But all of them
stood there like mute spectators.”
Recently, the Government of India adopted new anti- trafficking
provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) through the Criminal Law
(Amendment) Act of 2013 that criminalizes trafficking in accordance with
the Palermo Protocol.
According to Equality Now, these important provisions don’t cover all
the needs for anti-trafficking protections through legal reform. A
letter of petition directed to the Government of India sponsored by
Equality Now is now asking for updated amendments to be added to a law
that has been on the books in India for 30 years. This Immoral Traffic
(Prevention) Act (ITPA) of 1956
is way over due to be updated, outlines Equality Now.
“The experience of being sold into prostitution by a person known and
trusted is common around the world. Like Ayesha, most women are
coerced, manipulated, tricked or forced into prostitution—all forms of
trafficking. They are then held in debt bondage, intimidated and abused
when they try to get out,” said Lauren Hersh, Director of Equality Now’s
Trafficking Program. “Prostitution is not a choice when there is no
viable alternative. And Ayesha and her daughter show that when poor
women have opportunities, they readily choose other alternatives.”
Understanding the needs and human rights of women and girls who have
been, and are today still, caught in the cycle of forced-prostitution
through human trafficking is seen as a basic step for those who want to
change laws for the better in India, say global advocates.
“When people tell me that women choose this life, I can’t help but
laugh. Do they know how many women like me have tried to escape, but
have been beaten black and blue when they are caught? To the men who buy
us, we are like meat. To everybody else in society, we simply do not
exist,” said Ayesha.
__________________________________________________________________
A tidal wave of trafficked girls crossing the border
regions of India from Bangladesh, as well as Bhutan and Nepal, is
enabling the destruction of young lives that often go without rescue.
The daughters who are missing are often younger than 13 when they end up
in the red-light district brothels throughout India. This story follows
the efforts of sex-trafficking investigator Sam Kiley who follows an
ocean of sex-slaves that are being trafficked from South Asia every
year. The Indian town of Siliguri is one of the hubs of the
international sex trade where every year, tens of thousands of young
girls are abducted and sold into prostitution. This video has been
produced by UK Channel 4 Unreported World video series covering the trafficking of children in India for the sex trade in Calcutta and Bombay.
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For more information on this topic:
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Additional sources for this story include Equality Now, Apne Aap,
ECPAT International, BBC news, Ministry of Home Affairs – National Crime
Records Bureau India, PRS Legislative Research India, Half the Sky
Movement, U.S. Department of Justice, UNODC – United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime and Telegraph India.
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