New aspects of sex trade in India

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 .

Indian Church response to corruption

Corruption and the Church response to malaise within, and in the nation

JOHN DAYAL

The butler of the Pope says his own indiscretions were to get some sunlight into the murky goings on in a section of the Vatican. With at least two Church of North India bishops in jail, some senior Pentecostal and Evangelical Pastors and a few Catholic Bishops and Archbishops accused by their laity and priests of various shenanigans in matters of finance and properties, it is difficult to pretend corruption is not an issue with the various denominations of the Indian church. Institutional structures of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and even Buddhism at the highest levels are also grappling with the debilitating impact of moral turpitude in general and financial misadventures in particular.

Collectively, corruption in all religions and their institutional structures does not begin to approach the massive corruption in the political, administrative and corporate sectors, but it can hardly be tolerated as religious institutions and personnel claim to represent the moral edifice of the nation, and strive to be accepted as the conscience of the country. The people therefore look askance at, and are deeply disturbed by, occasional media exposures linking god men including self styled God-men, Shankaracharyas, Lamas who head important Sanghas, members of Gurudwara committees and Christian clergy caught with their fingers in the till.

If people in the West abhor corruption as something alien to their civilization, the anger is even more in India, a country of 200 million rich and a full billion poor. Corruption has different meaning among the faithful in India who see it as a betrayal of their trust, apart from corruption being a crime in the eyes of the law and a sin under religious codes. This is where the magnitude of corruption within the church is so different from its ethical counterpart in the corporate private sector and the public domain, which means in the government sector. Metaphorically, if the salt has lost its salinity, how would it regain that taste of the pure stuff?

There is a ray of hope. A debate is beginning within Catholic and Protestant churches on how to respond to internal corruption and, externally, how to relate to the several civil society movements, now virtual crusades in their intensity, that are now posing a challenge to the political and corporate establishment.

The elephantine structure that it is, the Catholic Church in India has been the slow one in this matter. The relationship between sovereign dioceses, the overlay of Rites and their relationship with the Catholic Bishops Conference, now severely restricted in its scope after the reforms of the last decade with no mandatory powers over anyone, makes nuanced decision making a very slow process, even if the will is present.

Very little exercise is done in studying ideological and political overtones in issues of national important. Theological studies defining moral responses to other issues are also no more than an occasional phenomenon, and then borrowing copiously from the Vatican’s Social teachings of the Church without too much modification to suit local social, economic and political environmental conditions. It would be a futile search if one were to look for official documents presenting the Church position on the subject of corruption other than the official spokespersons’ assertions in the media that the church is opposed to all forms of corruption in the nation’s body politic.

Therefore, individual bishops have responded in the light of their own wisdom to the Anna Hazare movement and, after the split in the India Against Corruption, to the breakaway faction of former Income tax official Arvind Kejriwal who now heads his own political party.

The most visible has been the action of the Delhi Archdiocese and its Archbishop, Monseigneur Vincent Michael Concessao, nationally one of the most respected Catholic figures in India. Kejriwal has been calling on the Archbishop for ten years or so, in fact from the time that he launched himself into the very successful Right to Information Movement with Aruna Roy and others and had started dreaming of a campaign against corruption in the government.

It was not surprising that when the India Against Corruption [IAC] movement-cum-NGO was formed, Abp Concessao found himself co-opted into the core committee, together with a few of his priests, convinced of the motives of the man. As a matter of fact, many of the early meetings of the Core committee were held in Catholic offices.

At that stage, perhaps, there was no need to examine or even suspect Kejriwal’s motives, intentions and ambitions. The national mood of euphoria had been set by the media, particularly the 24x7 telecast by the national English and Hindi satellite channels in metropolitan cities exhorting people to come to the rallies of the IAC. In those heady days of make-believe, it almost seemed the battle had been won against corruption and it was only a matter of days when the government collapsed, the prime minister capitulated to Hazare-Kejriwal-Kiran Bedi, corrupt politicians were arrested, officials sacked and the hundreds of billions of rupees in black money stacked away in Swiss banks was brought home to dispel gloom and poverty overnight. 

Those pleading caution and an ideological understanding were pushed to the margins. A few Jesuits who had seen through Kejriwal, people such as Fr. Ambrose Pinto of St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, put their opinion into books, but without making a real impact on the church.

The first jolt was not far coming. The Hazare’s first rally at Delhi’s sprawling Ram Lila Grounds, even as the Archbishop and some of us sat on the stage, it was noticed that the backdrop had little to do with the battle against corruption and more to do with the sort of hyper nationalistic patriotism associated with the Sangh Parivar. The slogans matched the backdrop. The stage itself was monopolized by political ideologues who espoused that theology.

The Archbishop continued in the core committee but did not attend any more of similar public rallies. After some months, once the true colours of the Kejriwal gang became apparent, the Archbishop politely withdrew. There never was a question that his presence in the core committee would persuade Kejriwal to change strategies or even his acrid language. It is a moot question if IAC missed the presence of the major religious groups in it leadership in Delhi or in the few states where they were active.

Unlike Archbishop Vincent and some top leaders of the Federation of Catholic Associations of the Archdiocese, other Catholic and Protestant Bishops and Lay leaders were not on the scene at all. In hindsight, perhaps it was for the good, though at one time, the Catholic community in the city was being persuaded to be seen at Kejriwal’s and Hazare’s meetings and rallies at Jantar Mantar crossing on Parliament street in the national capital and other places.

This writer may be wrong, but Protestant Bishops were not members of the core committee, and neither did they exhort their communities to join the movement. The Evangelical and Pentecost church has not been a part of civil society action on most issues, and makes its presence felt specially in protests against the persecution of Christians in various parts of the country, or on issues relevant to their denominations.

Perhaps there is need even now for all church groups to come together and debate a response to the corruption that is sapping the nation’s strength and putting a strain on its economy. The Christian community and the church at large does indeed have a role as an important member of the national civil society and should contribute in some creative way to further the debate on the tackling of corruption in the nation.

If the Catholic Church leadership has been somewhat visible in the issue of national corruption, it is almost absolutely invisible in the debate on corruption within the church where the evangelical church has taken a collective lead.

It is not that there is no corruption within the Catholic church where the preoccupation with retaining the FCRA permits of various religious congregations, and the need to protect the interests of educational institutions have made the church vulnerable, and religious personnel vulnerable to demands of illegal gratification by officials of local and state governments.

There is also the matter of properties and financial administration in parishes and dioceses. There are issues both of Indian civil law and the Catholic Churches’ own Canon Law and Code of Canon [for the two Syrian churches] in terms of financial transparency. The life style of some in the clergy does invite comment, and large dioceses such as Mumbai, there have been open allegations against some priests of defalcation of parish funds, or their refusal to be answerable to anyone on the disposal of church collections. A canonical stipulation of lay and expert participation in financial committees is not observed in letter and spirit in many dioceses and within them, in many parishes. And though the Catholic Church is till buying properties to set up institutions, in some of the major dioceses, where there have been donations on land in the past two centuries, there are now allegations that the properties have been alienated in procedures that lack transparency.

In recent weeks, there have been important developments in the Catholic Church indicating a willingness to engage with the issue. The most important of these was the symposium organized by the Theological Association of India at Jullundur in Punjab in October this year, held at Bishop’s house with Bishop Anil Couto formally inaugurating the deliberations of 50 very eminent scholars from congregations, colleges and seminaries across the country. Participating in it were philosophers of the stature of Jesuit Fr. TK John. The symposium has seen a honest and sincere effort at understanding all facets of corruption, including the moral one relating to the Dalit issue in church and society on which Prof Fr. Ambrose Pinto held forth with some force.

The formal statement of the ITA symposium succinctly said the Catholic Church was aware of the impact of corruption on national life, and particularly the marginalised and the poor, Tribals and Dalits. The church recognised corruption both as a crime under the Indian laws, and a sin in the eyes of God. Religious communities of all faiths must come together to raise their voice against it. The ITA cautioned against politicisation and fragmentation of the struggle against corruption lest it dilute the impact. Corruption was also linked to the process of globalisation of the national economy. Women and children were the worst impacted.

The scholars are considering an action plan for the Church in India to spot and remove whatever corrupt practices may have entered institutions so that the Church can become an example to others in eliminating all forms of corruption.

Of great importance is the Operation Nehemiah exercise initiated by a section of the Evangelical churches under the   Lausanne Movement which has also seen remarkable participation by some catholic leaders and officials of the National Council of Churches and the Evangelical Fellowship of India. Some Bishops of the Syrian Churches also participated. The Catholic hierarchy was represented, in their personal capacity, in the thinking activity over the last year and a half.

The three cardinal principals of this exercise were a theological understanding of assets as being creation of God, vulnerability and temptation of church personnel and therefore the need for creating and putting in place systems of management and auditing. An important argument underpinning the exercise was the understanding that unlike criminal law, intention is not to merely punish but to offer an opportunity to the guilty to redeem themselves, most importantly through the promise of making good the loss, or what is called the principle of reparations. It was, of course, understood that at all times, the Church has a critical role in civil society as a part of the same society and it must have the courage to speak out and lead, and therefore like Caesar’s wife, it had to be clean itself.

The discussions were wide-ranging, and from all points of view – philosophical, technical, legal, spiritual. In fact at one stage, there was a serious if slightly hilarious debate if a confession of collective guilt in a Christian sort of way opened the person or institution to prosecution by law agencies of the government.

The end product of the exercise is the Operation Nehemiah Declaration against corruption, ONDAC, which is now in the public domain and is being presented to mainline and independent churches as a working paper to spark off a debater in various for a.

It remains to be seen if churches will unanimously adopt it, or will modify it to suit their own genius.

But it is an exercise that is well begun.

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Box item with John Dayal’s article on corruption

Operation Nehemiah Declaration against Corruption (ONDAC)

Bengaluru, September 2011

Introduction:

A gathering of concerned Christians in leadership in the Church in India in all its glorious diversity, took place on the 2^nd of September 2011, at Bengaluru, as a part of the Operation Nehemiah Movement, to be “salt and light of society.” The gathering recalled the remarkable contribution that the Church and her institutions have made to the development of India, besides discussing issues of financial corruption in the country and the Church, while grieving with its victims on the margins. 

Affirmation

Giving praise to God the creator, redeemer and sustainer, we, in faith, affirm that:

1.     God invites us as the Church in India to participate in the building of our nation and calling her to be true to the national motto of Satyamev Jayate (truth alone triumphs).

2.     God is the rightful owner of all land and natural resources. Every man and woman, individually and collectively has been appointed as the steward, finally accountable to God. 

3.     We acknowledge that God gives all positions of leadership and authority for the purpose of service and governance. We believe that God has created men and women in his image and likeness, so they have life and fullness of life.

4.     The mission of the Church includes being witnesses to the Good News, freeing the oppressed and creating a just and corruption-free society, so that all will enjoy abundant life. The Church, in theology and practice should transform the lives of people, so that everyone experiences the will and purposes of God on earth.

5.     Domains of power, position and authority expressed through structure and systems in society and the Church, are particularly susceptible to the temptation of corruption, leading to inequality, injustice, manipulation and oppression.

6.     Financial corruption in all its forms is not acceptable to the Church and society under any circumstances.

Confession

Christians have always recognized that confession and repentance of our sins is an integral part of our reconciliation with God and with one another. In accordance with that belief and in faithfulness to the teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that we should first remove the “plank in our own eyes,” we repent and confess the sin of corruption in our personal lives, Church and nation, which has tainted our love for God.

Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servants are praying before you. Almighty and most merciful Father we lower our heads before you and we confess that we have sinned in thought word and deed. We confess that we have not always been good financial stewards. Instead, we have often exploited and appropriated God’s assets for our own selfish advantage. We have failed to consistently demonstrate a sense of responsibility and accountability. Honesty, truth and integrity have tended to become negotiable values. We have not always acted justly towards each other and have sinned against God the provider. We have left undone those things, which we ought to have done; and we have done those things, which we ought not to have done. For these things we ask your forgiveness and we also ask for your strength.

Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed to always live with honesty, truth and integrity. Grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

Commitment

With God as our helper

1.     We desire to overcome the sin of financial corruption by submitting to the supreme authority of Christ and follow His example of justice, righteousness, humility and sacrificial service.

2.     We will continually examine and radically change our lives in response to God’s indignation at the state-of-affairs and His redemptive desire for all creation.

3.     We resolve to be honest stewards of God-given resources, willingly submitting to appropriate scrutiny and correction, adopting good governance, and conducting self-critical review of our practices, to encourage responsible behavior for financial integrity.

4.     We are committed to upholding the highest levels of integrity in all our financial interactions with society at large.

5.     We do not encourage any irregular financial transaction with any organization or body - governmental or otherwise.

6.     We commit to making and working with institutions that uphold the highest standards of financial accountability and transparency.

7.     We commit to encouraging awareness and vigilance regarding bribery and unethical financial practices. 

8.     We commit to working towards an India that is transparent and without corruption.

9.     We will work with other movements at every level to respond to the issues of Financial Corruption, to express God’s presence with, and love for the victims of financial corruption.

10.  As a community that lives under the grace, forgiveness and redemptive power of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are committed to enabling healing and reconciliation for those who repent of acts of financial corruption.

In obedience to God we, individually and collectively, strive to remove corruption from Church and society, thus providing avenues of healing, reparation and redemption, which leads to restoration of the body of Christ, our nation and all of creation. 

India and Freedom of Faith

India must  honour its international obligations on real Freedom of Religion

JOHN DAYAL

Barring  a  Jesuit here or a Religious Sister there,  all  individuals, the Church in India seems rapidly withrawing from social action in the country, specially action which smacks of anything political.  As seen in the aftermath of the Koodamkulam anti-nuclear plant movement, the Government of India has beaten the church into submission by unleashing the full horror of itss power to suspend the Foreign Contribution permit of the diocese and several non government organisations in the district and the state.

Such action not only silences the voice of the people and restricts constitutional gurantees of freedom of speech and of association, it also allows the goveernment to get away with murder  -- the mruder of civil liberties in the country – knowing there will be little or no protest.  This gives a pungent edge to the government’s refusal to acknowledge that there is something seriously wrong with the implementation of human rights and civil liberties, including the freedom of faith, in the Indian landmass, cutting across the political divide.

This perhaps was the reason that the Church, incluiding the Catholic Church, was not active during the process of India’s Universal Peridoic Review at Geneva under thed aegis of the United nations Human Rights Council from March to September end this year. India’s living in a state of denial was the most evident in this UPR. Every member country of the United Nations undergoes this process once every four years, opening itself up to scrutiny of the world on its human rights record, specially with respect to rights it has pledged to implement by signing the international treaties and protocols, such as Freedom of Religion and Faith, gender rights  and such like.

Away from the glare of India Shining and the so called high growth – now more honestly at less than 7 per cent annually, far away from the fabled 9 per cent it had been speaking of for the last five years -- India does abysmally on the rights of women and children, even on freedom of speech. Its worst records are on racism, as the Dalit issue is seen  internationally, on issues of freedom of religion, and on torture. India, indeed, has not signed  the international  protocols on torture.

These were pointed out to India by ambassasors of various countries that cross examined it in Geneva. The Indian government delegation, led no less than by Attorney General Vahanvati, acccepted a few suggestions, but out of hand rejected or remained silent on most others. As some international agencies pointed out after the UPR process was over, India deliberately ignored urgent international and entreaties for an early enactment of laws against communal and targetted violence, an abrogation of the so called Freedom of Religion legislation several states, and accepting the long-pending demand of Dalit Christians for their Constitutional rights.

The Government of India’s  response to the 169 recommendations of the UNHRC reflected a pattern of only accepting recommendations that were generalized and broadly worded, lacking a targeted course of action directed to tackle discrimination and specific human rights challenges. Recommendations pertaining to specific as well as serious human rights issues were rejected, despite the Council’s expressed concern.

India has not accepted recommendations asking to create a comprehensive framework to deal effectively with the particular circumstances of communal or targeted violence.  The government says communal violence is only a sporadic problem. The religious minorities contest this argument as they continue to be violently attacked in a number of states. As we have seen in Kandhamal and Karnataka specially, victims  are also not able to access justice. And this situation, the Christian community specially fears, will continue to be repeated in future unless some immediate steps are taken by the government to prevent and pre-empt acts of communal violence.

Church groups in India have  urged  the government to bring forth the Bill  on prevention of Communal and Targetted Violence, including issues of compensation rehabilitation, and reparation, at the earliest. Such a Bill was drafted by the National Advisory Council in 2011 and given to the government. This Bill has been put in cold storage specially after Hindu groups and political groups such as Bharatiya Janata Party mounted a well orchestrated campaign, reviling the proposed law as specifically targetting the Hindu community in the country, despite explanations that it would protect Hindus in states such as Jammu and Kashmir and Mizoram where they too were a demographic minority. Christian and Muslim groups are pressing the draft legislation should be taken out, refined in consonance with principles of federalism, and enacted as law to effectively bring an end to communal strife which has ravaged this country in the last six decades.  Arguably, the situation in Kandhamal, both the violence, the shoddy rehabilitation programme and the lack of justice, could have been avoided if such a law was in place.

The Christian community, cutting across denominational lines, has also been pressing for a long time that the federal Government take necessary legislative and  legal steps to recall the so called Freedom of Religion Acts promulgated in several states. These Acts are being used to harass and intimidate religious minorities, and in particular the Christian Community and their  pastors, house churches and community gatherings. The law is strongly backed by the BJP and what is called the Sangh Parivar, the motley group consisting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s right wing hyper nationalist, organisations. But it also has the backing of a section of the Congress – specially in the Indo-Gangetic plains of northern and Central India which are politically important.

It does seem an uphill task on these two, but Christian activists remain hopeful that a well thought out national and international advocacy programme can get them the  support of a very large segment of India’s secular population which  has been repelled by the many acts of violence targetting the Sikhs, in 1984, and the Muslims and Christians over many decades.