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IN THE NEWS 2003
By Sugita Katyal Reuters
AlertNet, UK - 9 Jun 2003 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. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL8733.htm
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