Lost Daughters – An ongoing tragedy in Nepal

KAMALA SARUP, Nepal Correspondent with LYS ANZIA – WNN Features

This desperate mother traveled from her village in Nepal to Mumbai, India, hoping to find and rescue her teenage daughter who was trafficked into an Indian brothel. Nepalese girls are prized for their fair skin and are lured with promises of a “good” job and the chance to improve their lives. “I will stay in Mumbai,” said the mother, “Until I find my daughter or die. I am not leaving here without her.” Image: Kay Chernush US State Department

WNN Nepal – “In recent years, millions of women and girls have been trafficked across borders and within countries. The global trafficking industry generates an estimated five to seven billion U.S. dollars each year, more than the profits generated by the arms and narcotics trades,” quotes a Feb 2001, Asia Foundation and Horizons Project Population Council report.

In the late 17th century, the brothel area of Kamathipura was first established to service British troops in what was then called Bombay, India. In 2004, the cost to buy a sex-trafficked girl from Nepal in what is now called Mumbai, has risen to 100,000 – 120,000 Indian rupees (approx $2,004 – 2,405 USD). Girls trafficked from Nepal are known as a “tsukris.” They are those who have been indentured (forced) to work under a “never ending” contract commonly found with human trafficking.

The industry in the trafficking of Nepali girls is a very lucrative business. It can include forced labor, domestic and factory work. Young girls who are teenagers are often used in the sex-trafficking industries, though, because of the extreme profit for traffickers and the very low incidence of law enforcement arrests against sex-industry racketeers.

Arresting the traffickers can be very tricky. In rural Nepal this is a constant challenge as adequate police enforcement is often non-existent. Seen only as an investment to brothel owners, trafficked girls, in addition to cooperating in the daily sex-servicing of clients, are used by the brothel owners as “virgins,” as owners attempt to sell a girl’s virginity over and over again. This insidious crime can be found throughout the back alleys of Mumbai today.

So, why are most brothel owners interested much more in owning girls from Nepal versus girls from India?

The answer is obvious. Sex sells and girls from villages like Ichowk, Mahankal and Talmarang in the Sindhupalchowk district in northern central Nepal are full of girls who are more than anxious for a better life.

Besides this, Nepalese girls are cheaper to buy, much more cooperative and much easier to control and enslave. Girls from the rural regions are known to be much more obedient and considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them. Nepali girls coming from the rural farming areas, because of their naïveté,  are much more easy to cheat and to force into debt bondage. This is because they have very little, if any, education and they usually do not speak any of the native languages of India.

“Annually, according to U.S. Government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of transnational victims are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors,” reports the US Department of State in a 2008 study.

In an unending cycle of degradation, Nepali girls are forced each and every day into the sex-trades. And most often face vast cultural and gender discrimination if they return home.

In April 21, 2008, WNN correspondent, Kamala Sarup, organized a program on HIV/AIDS and Trafficking in the district of Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. Here she shares a first hand story about the sex-trafficking in Nepal:

Tamang used to come to Kathmandu at our house every year. He was a part-time tailor and full-time farmer who used to work in Kathmandu to make extra money to take home each year. He was a very poor man. When I saw him the first time he told me he wanted to send his daughter, Tara, to school. I felt very kind toward him, so I gave him a small room to stay at our big family home in Kathmandu. But my parents did not like my decision and our community criticized me because of his poverty and standing. This year, Tamang did not come to Kathmandu, so I went to see him and his family in his village.

According to The Asia Foundation, a human rights advocacy group for women, many Nepali communities “recognize the role of social and economic hardships in vulnerability to trafficking. They also blame the immoral character of the trafficked girl herself. Girls who seek independence, want exposure to the world outside.”

While girls are faced with desperate prospects in trying to “improve” their lives, they are many times “tempted by the prospect of gaining material benefits and are perceived as bad and more likely to be trafficked,” continued The Asia Foundation.

The daughter of Tamang was lost. But for Tamang, it’s not a new incident, because the loss of girls in Nepal is quite common in Sindhupalchowk. (Sindhupalchowk is a district of the Central Development Region of Nepal in the Bagmati Zone, 75 KM from Kathmandu).

The forced prostitution of teenage girls in Sindhupalchok is a ongoing hideous crime of deceit, deception and broken promises. In many rural areas, some girls leave home due to domestic violence and other personal problems. But there also exists many cases of missing girls who have left home purely in an attempt to better their life or to provide for family obligations.

Many sex-traffickers take advantage of these conditions as they falsely encourage girls to leave home.

Often these daughters are persuaded to travel with people who offer marriage and a better life, jobs or money. Many times, they and their parents are also promised education in the large cities of neighboring India. While this is not often the case, some parents who are suffering under severe economic hardship are also known to deceive their daughters as they sell them to traffickers.

“Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by threat or use of violence, abduction, force, fraud, deception or coercion (including the abuse of authority), or debt bondage, for the purpose of placing or holding such person, whether for pay or not, in forced labor or slavery-like practices, in a community other than the one in which such person lived at the time of the original act described,” said Sri Lankan attorney and UN Special Rapporteur on Violence, Radhika Coomaraswamy, at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Watching Tamang enter his house after his day’s work he consoled his wife, Sunita, as their worry about Tara mounted. These are the moments when Tamang should be sharing his pleasures and pains with his wife. He loves Sunita very deeply. He remembered well how he had sung love songs while going to the market in his youth with Sunita. But now, how can he console his wife? Tara was missing and there was no one who knew where she had gone.

Tamang tries to control his hesitating and worried mind. He lights a leaf-wrapped cigarette letting his mind burn along with the dark stick of cigarette. “This life just goes on burning just like a cigarette!” he sighed in dismay.

Because most sex-trafficking in rural Nepal is often made through personal contacts and arrangements, up-to-date detailed accurate documentation and data of girls who have been forced into the global sex-industry in this region is still greatly lacking. Tragically, many missing girls from Nepal disappear deep into the brothel system of India without a trace. As time passes, they are often sold again and again, to one owner after another, only to settle deep into the degradation of life trapped as a young prostitute.

In 2007, the Interim Government of Nepal upheld sanctions against all human trafficking in Nepal.

THE INTERIM CONSTITUTION OF NEPAL, 2063 (2007)

29. Right Against Exploitation

(1) Every person shall have the right against exploitation.

(2) No person shall be exploited in the name of custom, tradition and practice,

or in any other way

(3) No person shall be subjected to human trafficking, slavery or bonded labour.

(4) No person shall be subject to forced labour.

The top destination for most Nepalese girls is to Mumbai brothels. Other common destinations for run-away girls leaving Nepal include the cities of Pune, Delhi and Kolkata, India. Calcutta, too, is an area where trafficking is a lucrative business. Areas outside of India include cities in numerous locations in the Middle East / Asia regions.

Tamang’s wife, Sunita, cast a quick glance towards Tamang. It was then he felt overwhelmed with love.

“What can you do now by crying?” he said to his wife. “Instead, let’s leave this village and go far away, tomorrow right away! Could it be that our daughter went to Kathmandu?”

Girls who are victims of sex-trafficking in Nepal often come from the very poorest regions of Nepal. Without education or opportunity they often live with their families on the poorest outcast edge of society. Often food may be scarce or clean water unavailable. Missing girls can be as young as 8 or 9, but are most often 14 – 18 yrs of age. They often come from the very lowest caste in Nepali society, where hardship is the norm, although current trends in trafficking are showing higher-caste girls who are also being bought and sold by traffickers.

For the last decade it has been estimated that  6,000 – 7,000 girls are trafficked out of Nepal each year. But these numbers have recently risen substantially. Current numbers for girls trafficked out of the country are now 10,000 to 15,000 yearly. This is compounded as the US Central Intelligence Agency states that most trafficked girls are currently worth, in their span as a sex-worker, approx $250,000 (USD) on the sex-trades market.

2005 data from case records documented by six rehabilitation centers in Nepal of sex-trafficked women show that most (72.7%) rural girls who are trafficked are Hindu by religion. 59.9% are unmarried. 46.5% are 16-18 yrs of age and 77.2% have none to little education.

Tamang wanted to speak but  he felt an unbearable pain in his heart. He thought it not at all proper to cry in front of his wife.

“I had suggested that we should get Tara married in time,” said Sunita. “You heard my words in one ear and let it go through another ear. Now, who knows, someone could have taken her away and sold her!”

Tamang’s heart was broken in two as his wife spoke. He felt as if someone had smeared his burning chest in salt and red chilies.

The odds for a girl to escape her life in the brothels, once she is there, is very slim. Only a dismal percentage (6.9%) of brothel owners will voluntarily release one of their girls. 73.7% of all girls trapped inside the brothel system must be rescued if they are ever to reach the outside world again.

Maiti Nepal, a 20 yr old rescue organization,based in Kathmandu, is one of the organizations that today manages ongoing rescue of Nepali girls from the brothels of Mumbai. Going up against organized crime in India is not an easy matter though. “The criminal elements that ‘deliver’ young girls are a ruthless enemy and have political connections at the highest levels in India and Nepal. Maiti Nepal’s main office in Kathmandu has been destroyed twice and Maiti workers must travel with a bodyguard when overseeing rescue missions in India,” said the sister organization of Maiti Nepal, called Friends of Nepal.

As Tamang got up abruptly he thought of the young man, Harka, who grew up in his village. In fact, he had heard rumors from time to time about the intimate relation of his daughter with Harka. Maybe his daughter was taken away by him. “Harka is not a good man. I don’t trust him,” thought Tamang. “He was under police custody for seven days when he was involved in a squabble in the village.”

Most sex-trafficking (59.4%) in Nepal is carried out through “Dalals” or brokers who falsely guarantee good work to girl-children who are willing to travel to other country locations. At times, the some Dalals even pretend to marry girls who come from families with little resources, as they sell them in the brothels. The real tragedy is that most, if not all, trafficking victims fall into forced prostitution because of false promises made by someone “familiar” to them.

“It is estimated that 50 percent of Nepalese sex workers in Mumbai brothels are HIV positive,” says a World Bank 2004 report. The youngest victims of sex-trafficking are those most likely to be directly exposed to HIV/AIDS. There is an “increased risk among those trafficked prior to age 15 years,” says a 2007 JAMA – American Medical Association report.

Coming home with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis causes most trafficked girls to suffer intense judgement. Often Nepal society blames the victims of sex-trafficking, not the traffickers, for choosing a “life of immorality.”

Tamang couldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night. On one hand, he was extremely worried at the thought of his missing daughter. On the other hand, his wife didn’t allow him to fall asleep because of her nightlong weeping. Seeing his own cold bed he was angry and disgusted. “What is the use of such a life which is full of so many wants?” he said. Even if Tamang worked hard through the year, he could not afford sufficient food for the family nor could he spend more than a few rupees in front of his friends and relatives. And now, on top of it all his daughter, Tara, is lost.

On top of the discrimination thrown at them for being “sex-workers” many trafficked girls also end up dealing with rejection by others because they have HIV/AIDS. In 2007, JAMA outlined statistics that prove a direct rise in HIV/AIDS cases in the youngest section of girls trafficked from Nepal. These girls are usually 9 to 14 yrs of age. “Within this high-risk group, risk for HIV was increased among girls trafficked at 14 years or younger (60.6% HIV-positive) to those trafficked to Mumbai (49.6% HIV positive) and to those reporting longer duration in brothels,” the JAMA report states.

These problems are wrapped deep inside the structure of Nepal and Indian society as a whole. Girls and women in Nepal are usually only given status according to the economic and social standing of their fathers and/or brothers. A majority of Nepali women are expected to live according to ”traditional” Nepali standards that leaves little opportunity to build any self-esteem.

According to JAMA, “Sexuality is a taboo in Nepal; discussing sex and sexuality is beyond the social morality,” states a FWLD – Forum for Women Law and Development (Kathmandu) report. “Sex work is considered ‘deviant’ behavior and is unacceptable (in Nepal). As a result, sex workers retain highly marginalized status in the society.”

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