Human Trafficking – three short stories
and a brief interview
JOHN DAYAL
The horror of contemporary Human Trafficking
in India
JOHN DAYAL
On issues of human
tricking, specially where the victims are women and the girl child, it does not
take very many words to bring out the stark horror of the situation as it
exists in India at present.
First, three horror
stories told me recently by national and international activists working in
India on this subject. Each one is true, I am assured.
STORY 1 – Nagpur, Maharashtra:
A baby girl was found
abandoned near a garbage heap. She was picked up by some people and brought to
a woman, apparently a widow, and in need of money. She was promised a handsome monthly allowance
and asked to take care of the baby as if it were her own daughter, with enough
to pay for her food, education and clothing.
In fifteen years, the little girl grew with the woman, believing her to
be the mother. The widow too developed a strong bond with the girl. The girl
was a student of class X when a man came to the woman, told her that her
“duties” with regard to the child were over, handed her some money and took the
girl away. The story came to light when anti-trafficking activists subsequently
rescued the girl.
STORY 2 – Mumbai, Maharashtra:
After a rescue
mission, a minor girl was being counseled by the group, which had done the
rescue. The woman objected when the counselors addressed her as a female,
insisting that “she” was a man. Non-plussed at first, the counselor persisted,
asking why the woman did not want to be addressed as one. The person narrated
his/her story. “I was a youth living in a Mumbai suburb, commuting daily to
work in the city. One day, in the local train, a fellow passenger gave me
something to eat. I took it and lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a
luxurious hospital suite, but in great pain. I discovered I had been castrated,
and now had a vagina.” Apparently a cosmetic surgeon had done the complicated
surgery to create an artificial vagina. The victim was kept in the hospital for
several weeks while the wounds healed. He was given hormone injections and
began to develop breasts and other female characteristics. After a couple of
months of stay in the hospital, he was discharged – now looking like a woman.
He was subsequently passed onto a Mumbai brothel owner where he was forced to
entertain clients like other inmates, and did so till he was rescued. The Child
Welfare Committee before whom this youth, legally still a minor, was produced
got extensive tests done which confirmed that “she” was a male. This remains
the most bizarre case of human trafficking the rescue group has ever come
across.
STORY 3 – also from Maharashtra
Minor
girls rescued from brothels are usually put in the custody of government homes.
The custody of the girls in the government homes meant for minors ends the day,
the girl turn 18. On that day, the girl is set free from the “protection” of
the shelter homes. Often the girls don’t have a home to go to and are clueless
about how to proceed once they are released. Often traffickers are in touch
with the clerical staff of the government homes and know exactly when a
particular girl is going to be turn 18 and will be released from the shelter
home. On the appointed day, the trafficker’s agent is waiting outside the gates
of the shelter home in a car ready to pick up the homeless and clueless girl.
The girl is picked up in a car, brought to a brothel readied to receive her and
soon she is reintroduced into trafficking, now as an adult.
Ruchira Gupta, an internationally
acclaimed and Delhi-based activist working on issues of human trafficking and
the sex “business” says of the 20 million enslaved people in the world, about a
million are trafficked into prostitution, cheap labour, organ trade, domestic
servitude, child marriage, child soldiers and bonded labour every year. Seventy
per cent of these are women and children. In India, the last official figure is
from the Central Bureau of Investigation is from 2009, says more than 3 million
women and girls were trapped in prostitution, of which 1.4 million were girls.
About two hundred thousand were being trafficked additionally every year.
The following are excerpts from an
interview Indian Currents had with her recently.
Question:
is trafficking just a quotient of poverty. Are parents involved?
Trafficking
is a demand driven Industry. It is formed of the buyer (end user), the business
(pimp, recruiter, transporter etc.) and the Bought (prostituted child, bonded
slave). Because there is a demand for using and abusing little girls and women,
traffickers simply go into poor and isolated villages, in “low caste” Dalit and
Tribal communities, and prey upon the destitution and vulnerability of such
poor people by offering a job in the big city or the false promise of marriage.
In the big cities brothel managers force mothers who enter their late twenties
to replace themselves with their daughters as they are unable to attract
customers.
Question:
With development, is it increasing or is there a palpable decrease:
It
is increasing because the demand to buy human beings for cheap labour or
exploitative sex is increasing, and the trafficking rings as well as the sex
industry are getting more increased. On top of that foundations like the Bill
and Melinda Gates foundation have entrenched the sex industry further by hiring
pimps and brothel managers as peer educators to distribute condoms, creating a
false notion of "ethical" demand that it is all right to but sex if one
uses a condom. They even funded a programme where the social marketing campaign
said, " It does not matter which sex worker you chose, chose the right
condom."
The
rise in the use of pornography is also fuelling the demand as twelve year old boys
surfing the net are suddenly invited by a cartoon character to play a game with
her and lo and behold a few clicks later he watches a woman being penetrated
from every part of her body, crying and saying give me more. He begins to
believe that sex is connected with violence ad domination and wants that kind
of sex!
Question:
Have rescue agencies and NGOs, or for that matter police, made a dent?
In
terms of actual human beings, NGOs have made a dent in preventing the
trafficking of people in some of the pockets they work, but very little has
been done to make a dent in the trafficking industry. Hardly any traffickers
and certainly know end users, who are basically slave owners are ever arrested,
prosecuted or convicted. “Crime in India” statistics show that more women are
arrested under the Indian law than men!
Question:
Can this be prevented at all?
Yes,
it is very preventable. If we see trafficking as a demand and supply problem,
Demand being formed of people who have choices with impunity - the buyers and
the business and supply being formed of people with lack and choices - marginalized
girls and women, isolated and poor low caste people, etc. If the government
tackles demand and supply simultaneously- tackle demand by holding legally
accountable people who enslave others, buy them and sell to deter their choice
and at the same time invest more in marginalized girls and women and caste
communities vulnerable to trafficking to increase their choices, trafficking
can be dismantled.
Sweden,
Norway, Iceland have all changed their laws to make the purchase of sex illegal,
not the selling of sex. They have shifted the blame from the victim to the perpetrator
and they have managed to reduce trafficking in their country.
The
problem can be tackled very easily if we value our girls ad women more and hold
those who abuse them accountable. Right now neither the police nor the
government wants to do anything about it.
Recently,
an anti-trafficking activist from the low-cast Nat community, Md Kalam, who had
been providing information against traffickers to my NGO, Apne Aap was falsely
arrested by a corrupt police official Shivdeep Lande. The police officer has
not been punished and anti-trafficking activists working for my NGO in Bihar
are absolutely terrorised. Kalam is out on bail but now traffickers know that
the police are on their side, so keep attacking our staff with impunity!
Ruchira
Gupta NGO website is www.apneaap.org .
