| Username |
Post |
| REM |
Posted
on 10-Jun-03 07:12 PM
FEATURE-AIDS fuels traffic of Nepali girls to India
By Sugita Katyal
NEW DELHI, June 9 (Reuters) - Priya was just 12 when she was drugged by an aunt and dumped at a brothel in New Delhi.
"I thought it was a cinema hall but then I realised they wanted me to do bad things," said the young Nepali woman, now 21, who was brought from her poverty-stricken village with the promise of a job as maid.
Priya spent the next three years in the Indian capital's red-light district where she says she was forced to have sex with "all kinds of men from 13-year-olds to old men with no teeth."
"They threatened me, saying they'd let me go if I worked for three years and earned 50,000 rupees ($1,070) for them," Priya told Reuters. "Otherwise, they said they'd send me to a brothel in Bombay where I'd be locked in a room until I was old."
Today, she's one of a lucky few to be rescued from sexual slavery -- in fact she now works with police, saving other women from brothels. But thousands of Nepali girls are trafficked across the 1,580-km (990-mile) India-Nepal border and sold to brothels.
Social workers say the number of girls being trafficked from Nepal has increased in recent years because of AIDS.
"There's a myth that having sex with a virgin can cure you of AIDS," said Roma Debabrata, president of STOP, a group that rescues girls from brothels.
She said some men with AIDS fork out up to 100,000 rupees ($2,126) -- almost an entire year's starting salary for an executive -- for a virgin.
There are from 200,000 to 375,000 Nepali women in Indian brothels, according to a report the Indian non-governmental organisation Prayas helped compile.
About 30 to 40 percent of the total number of women in India's red-light districts are Nepali, Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, told Reuters.
Trafficking of women from Nepal's hill communities began in the 19th century, when feudal lords recruited girls from the Helambu region north of Kathmandu to work as concubines. Owning "Helambu girls" became a mark of high social status.
SOLD TO BROTHEL OWNERS
Today, the practice of keeping concubines has ended but the recruitment of women continues -- only now they are sold to Indian brothel owners who like them because of their fair complexions.
"There are organised gangs and it's a multi-million-rupee trade," Nair said. "The problem is cross-border trafficking is not given the same importance as cross-border terrorism or trafficking of drugs."
Almost always the story is the same -- poor and illiterate girls as young as nine are sold by their families or lured to India with the promise of well-paid jobs as domestic or factory workers.
Once there, activists say they are sold to middlemen for $200 to $500 and then they must resign themselves to life as a prostitute or face gang rape and torture until they submit.
"Their spirit gets destroyed," said Nair.
A U.S.-based non-governmental group, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, recounts the story of 13-year-old Mira from Nepal who arrived at a brothel on Bombay's Falkland Road, where thousands of women are displayed in zoo-like cages.
"When she refused to have sex, she was dragged into a torture chamber in a dark alley used for breaking in new girls. She was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water," the report said.
After she refused to have sex for a fourth day, she was wrestled to the floor and her head was smashed against concrete until she passed out. When she awoke, she was raped. "Afterwards, she complied with their demands," the report said.
Some girls are rescued and some manage to escape but the numbers are few and far between. Many contract AIDS in India and are then sent back to Nepal where they are dismissed as "India's soiled goods."
India has nearly four million people suffering from HIV/AIDS -- second only to South Africa -- and health experts warn the numbers could spiral if steps are not taken to control it.
"Since 1997 we have rescued about 400 girls from brothels in New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta," said Bishwa Khadka, an official at Maiti Nepal, a group helping rescue and rehabilitate trafficked girls.
"Forty of them are still with us with AIDS and 10 have already died of AIDS while with us."
Faced with the prospect of social ostracism at home, one 16-year-old Nepali who STOP rescued from a Delhi brothel said she didn't want to go home.
"She said she did not want to be rescued because she had nowhere to go," said Debabrata.
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| ruck |
Posted
on 10-Jun-03 07:30 PM
Talking about brothels in India, what about all those young girls working for cabin dance resturants in Kathmandu. I hear that there are more than 3,000 such restuarants in Kathmandu and most of the girls (aged 11 and above) working for such restaurants are from maoist hit areas. What more??? hypocrite maobadi neta haru lai chahi mandir darshan garda ali kati gulity pani nahune...ajha cable chadheda manakamana darshan re.. Paapi !!
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| rmb |
Posted
on 10-Jun-03 07:37 PM
The problem isn't going to be solved as the only solution is closing our borders with India.
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| Bhunte |
Posted
on 10-Jun-03 07:46 PM
Ruck,
you have raised good point.
bhuntu
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| chick pea |
Posted
on 11-Jun-03 10:58 AM
Yes, the system is bad too but what about the family members that take them to these brothels. It starts from the home. These young girls get to India because of their family members. "Money is the root of all evil."
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| gharmigirl |
Posted
on 11-Jun-03 11:58 AM
excellent point chick pea. when i first read article and posts was so depressed about problem. but you bring up excellent point about family selling girls to slavery.
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| SITARA |
Posted
on 11-Jun-03 04:14 PM
"Trafficking" is an up and coming social evil which is man-made while its roots lie deep into society's economic, social and traditional demands. Social stratifications that evolved out of the caste system have indirectly created an environment suitable for discrimination, poverty and rituals supporting the exploitation of women. Take for example the Deuki and the Badi castes, the "low", "entertainer" castes stratified into entertaining others and barred from other regular professions. However, due to poverty and other financial bondages, the "entertaining" itself took on a wider role of involving "sexual entertainment" for a fee. In the recent years, urban migration for work in the carpet and garment industry brought into the cities, many young and innocent youth and children who were in dire straits. After, the collapse of the carpet industry, these youth were stranded in the cities, penniless, workless and homeless. Many foraged on them luring with lucrative job offers and/or faux marriage proposals.
With the advent of a long- drawn, internal war with the Maoists, more people have become susceptible to exploitation. Females are very vulnerable to abduction, seduction and coercion. Many families with absolutely no income sources have succumbed to the quick cash rewards of the sale of young family members. Women and girls are not the only ones at- risk, young boys too have been sold to traders from the middle East where they are consumed for sexual gratification, menial labor and/or camel races.
So, it is very disheartening to blame such practices solely on moralities and ethics of family members when the whole family's survival is at stake. How can we make judgement calls of a dismal situation where the Government does not have a support system for the homeless and those living below poverty level.
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| akash |
Posted
on 11-Jun-03 06:43 PM
Similar but different form of slavery. Article was published on NY Times.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2003/06/11/movies/11CIRC.html
Article:
A Grim High Wire for Indian Girls
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Wilderell Film
Saipan, left, a midget, with Anita Das, both of whom perform in India's Great Rayman traveling circus.
READERS' OPINIONS
Forum: Join a Discussion on Current Movies
India
ome of the more unsettling images in "Starkiss: Circus Girls in India," a documentary by the Dutch team of Chris Relleke and Jascha de Wilde, show smiling young girls in pink spangled miniskirts executing the grueling stunt that gives the movie its title. In the starkiss, a performer attached to a dangling rope by a bit in her mouth turns herself into a human top spinning wildly in midair. In one scene several rotating girls are choreographed into a kind of aerial ballet. The stunt is painful to master, one of them explains, because the early weeks of training leave the mouth and neck raw and aching, but eventually the body adjusts.
The movie, which opens today at Film Forum, is a cautious, digressive exposé of the girls' exploitation by their families and by the managers of the Great Rayman Circus, a popular Indian traveling show established in 1924.
====>>>>The performers, who number around 50 and range in age from 4 to 24, are chosen for their beauty and agility by Indian agents who scour Nepal for fresh young talent. Most are recruited from poor, debt-ridden families who are only too eager to sell their children to the circus for an advance. The girls are expected to work for a pittance ($2 a week is typical) until that front money has been recouped.
For a film that purports to expose a kind of slavery, "Starkiss" is pretty mild. The girls complain of homesickness and worry about the future, but there are no stories of cruelty or sexual exploitation. Isolated from the other performers in a closely guarded, haremlike compound equipped with a television, the girls, who are forbidden to speak to men, seem to accept their situation stoically, and in some cases they express gratitude. The work may be demanding and even perilous, but the performers are decently fed and sheltered. The life they lead is far preferable to working as prostitutes on the streets of Bombay, where many girls purchased by Indian agents eventually find themselves.
Given the movie's dearth of material about the girls, it fills out its running time with portraits of other circus performers. The most articulate is Johnson, a 30-year-old hunchbacked midget clown for whom the circus has provided a refuge from his hometown, where he was treated as a pariah. A forlorn figure, Johnson longs to marry and worries what will happen to him when he is too old to perform. Tiny, squeaky-voiced Saipan is even smaller than Johnson and can fit inside a shopping bag. Although in his teens, he is so childlike he is allowed to socialize with the girls and acts as a messenger between them and the outside world. Another performer has mastered the trick of swallowing 15 liters of water and regurgitating them in patterned spouts.
Romance, of course, still finds a way to flower, if not exactly flourish, in this stringent environment. One 17-year-old performer, Anita Das, who works with swords and parrots, is conducting a secret flirtation with Ravi Kumar, one of the circus's leading clowns. Little will probably come of the romance, which is carried on without spoken or physical contact. But the intrigue infuses the girl's life with a dreamy sense of hope.
STARKISS
Circus Girls in India
Produced, directed and written by Chris Relleke and Jascha de Wilde; in English, Hindi and Nepalese, with English subtitles; director of photography, Mr. Relleke. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 77 minutes. This film is not rated.
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| GurL_Interrupted |
Posted
on 11-Jun-03 07:17 PM
The families of these 'young gurLs,' who are being dragged into prostitution need to be educated and made aware 'bout the disadvantages to the young gurL, the family itself and the society about selling their daugthers to the strangers! I wish the governments instead of destroying each other would focus on providing ways to the helpless family members and the gurLs! I am pissed! Everybody is busy destroying (First world countries, thrid world countries, Earthquake, flood, SARS, TB, Aids, Tornadoes........................!)
Ruck you mentioned in ur posting, "hypocrite maobadi neta haru lai chahi mandir darshan garda ali kati gulity pani nahune...ajha cable chadheda manakamana darshan re.. Paapi !!" I was wondering, what was the relationship between the maobadi netas and the raised issue! I thought that was one of the reasons behind the war they waged for these many years? Explain please! Will appreciate it!
And does it mean, if in the eyes of the society u appear to be chor/gunda or a bad guy...you should keep urself away 4rm visiting God? Who knows! Only God knows and can see the heart! He knows it best, whose heart is darrkerrr...Mine or the Maobadi netas!
p.s. Sorry sis(Ruck) if you got offended reading my post! Had no intentions what so everrr!
:-) REM. Thanks :-)! Educate & Remind us more! Take care.
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