Report from the United Nations
The Heartwrenching Stories of Prostitution and Trafficking
By Linda Ash
July 5, 2005
June 23-24 was
historic at the UN in that for the first time Civil Societies and Non-governmental
Organizations were invited to present their views and concerns before a major
conference convened. The topic to be discussed was the Millennium Development
Goals. The actual conference takes place this September, and from what we
understand, all 191 member states will be in attendance.
During the Millennium Summit held in New York in September, 2000, eight core goals were formed and a road map of implementation was devised. The target date was 2015. The goals include:
- Eradication of extreme poverty
- Primary education for all children of the world
- Gender equality and empowerment of women
- Reducing child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases
- Environmental sustainability (in part, making sure all people have clean water to drink)
- Global partnership in bringing all these goals to fruition
Civil Societies and NGOs from around the world were invited to speak. It is with regards to two of these speeches that I would like to comment. I have attended many UN conferences during our six months here in New York City, and unfortunately I have been sorely disappointed in many of those, where among other very radical agendas, legalized prostitution has been promoted as a way of ending the ills of women, in particular poverty.
Friday morning, two women spoke on their desire to “live in dignity” and both spoke of the degradation of living in poverty, and then spoke of having to sell one's body taking women to an even further downward low. One woman was from Mexico, the other from the Philippines. They captured everyone's attention because of the passion with which they spoke. Applause followed the Mexican woman's remarks. Tears, hers and mine, followed the woman from the Philippines. Poverty and desperation of this magnitude is something I cannot imagine, and yet it is rampant in many of the developing countries of the world.
To further magnify their plight, many desperate women are given hope through possible domestic employment in far away cities. They willingly go with or send their daughters with men and women who come searching out the poorest of the poor promising a stable income and better living conditions. These men and women are called “traffickers,” and the unsuspecting victims don't understand their devious designs until it is too late.
A documentary was presented during the lunch hour on the second day of our meetings. Ruchira Gupta, a woman from India, was the presenter. She has been fighting this heartwrenching practice for more than 10 years. Her documentary, “Unreported World: Land of Missing Children” introduced us to a father who had lost his daughter to traffickers. Unlike many families who have no idea where to start looking for their missing children, he was a police officer and was able to track, miraculously locate, and rescue his 14-year-old daughter from the red-light district of Calcutta. She had been repeatedly beaten, raped and then sold into prostitution. It had taken him more than six months to locate her. She was pregnant by this time, with many physical and emotional scars, but she was fortunate not to have contracted HIV. More than half of those rescued are not so fortunate.
The documentary took us to the brothels of Calcutta, where the owner of one of these brothels was interviewed. Several of her girls were there to be interviewed as well, but the madame wouldn't let them answer any questions that she felt shouldn't be disclosed, like their age or how they came to be in this line of work. These girls were very young, and yet the madame insisted they were 20, 24 and 25. The narrator was obviously starting to annoy the madame with all of his probing, and she told him to leave or he would get acid thrown in his face. He left, and we left with him, walking down the narrow, dark and dirty streets of Calcutta.
The narrator of the documentary then spoke with two police officers who were totally indifferent to what went on in the brothels. We learned that many of them are involved in the corruption and they believe that these young girls are lowlifes who deserve to be where they are, doing what they do to satisfy the demands of their clients.
Our guide then took us to a police station where he confronted the chief of police with information about young girls being used as prostitutes in a local brothel. He refused to believe they were under 18, but he agreed to go with the narrator and the camera crew to investigate. The madame was furious, but there was nothing she could do. The camera filmed the raid. Ten young girls had been crammed into a space that was 3x4x4. Had they been waiting for their next client or hiding at the command of the madame? Then the police, camera crew and our narrator broke their way into the attic where another six or seven young girls were hidden away in not much more than crawl space. Two were in small chicken wire cages. It was pitiful.
Questions and answers after the documentary opened our eyes even wider to the plight of thousands of women and young girls who lose their lives and freedom every year to traffickers and forced prostitution.
As mentioned earlier, traffickers exploit the very poor and desperate with promises of work opportunities or even promises of marriage. When their parents don't hear from them, they are told their daughters ran away, and no one knows where to find them. Some are just abducted on their way to carry out family chores and are never heard from or seen again. Girls as young as 10 and 11 have fallen victim to this unbelievable atrocity. The demand for these young girls is increasing.
The narrator interviewed a customer who admittedly frequented the brothels two or three times every week. He paid 50 cents for each visit. He said that he would estimate that each young girl serviced 8-10 customers every night. When asked why the demand for this service was so high, his response, “men with HIV/AIDS can be healed if they have sex with a virgin.” And “masturbation causes blindness.”
We learned that 250,000 young girls are trafficked into Bombay every year. These young girls experience beatings, rape, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, skin disease, and insomnia, not to mention the emotional trauma of being taken from home and family and the innocence of youth. After two or three years of this life style, most are then just thrown out on to the street and abandoned.
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