Sunday, November 11, 2012

Human trafficking gangs evolve some new and sickening tricks


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 .

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