VARANASI, India—She is 22 years old and was forced from her Kathmandu home when she was only 17. Her family had sold her to a “marriage broker” for a small fee, only $100. For S, her family thought her future was settled. She would find a husband in India and return with grandchildren in a few years.
But that didn’t happen. After four forced abortions and hundreds of “clients,” S has finally found a way out of the horrors of the past five years living as a sex worker in northern India — a story which, for her, began just 15 hours into her journey away from home.
“When we got to this house, I was thrown into a room and the door was locked. They gave me food later in the day, but it was just the beginning,” she said recently, sipping tea here at a local women’s shelter run by two Indian women. When the men who drove her returned, they forced themselves on her. “I was a virgin and didn’t know what to do. It was horrible. After they finished, I was taken to the bathroom and drenched with water. I couldn’t stop crying.”
For years, S was kept in the room, which had a small mattress. Men would arrive daily and take turns raping her. She had become a sex worker. Last summer, however, those who ran the makeshift “hotel” forgot one evening to lock her window. She jumped from the first floor and ran off. After two days, she happened upon a pair of women who spoke some Nepali and were able to understand what had happened to her.
“These nice women had treated others like me and they took me in. It was the happiest day of my life,” she said, with tears welling up. Now that her own ordeal is over, S wants to stay in India and assist other Nepali women who have been forced into the sex industry against their will. “People back home turn a blind eye to what our women are forced to do, so I want to make a difference in their lives,” she said.
The exact number of Nepali women being trafficked into India to work in the sex trade is unknown, but local NGOs have reported cases in the tens of thousands. Recovery centers like the one run by the two women in Varanasi gives S hope for the thousands of other women forced into situations like her own.
Now, despite the present horrors, there is a growing movement across India — and Asia as a whole — to decriminalize the sex trade in order to deliver better oversight and health services to its victims. “I do believe we can have hope, and can help end this horrific experience that I and other girls are forced to go through, but we have to educate and get the police to crack down,” S said.
A 2012 report released jointly by the UN Development Program, the UN Population Fund and UNAIDS pressed for the decriminalization of sex work in many countries so that HIV prevention and treatment programs reach sex workers more effectively.
The report examined 48 Asian and Pacific countries, including China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, where sex workers reported condom confiscation and police harassment. Only New Zealand and the Australian state of New South Wales have laws that decriminalize sex work.
Reforms
John Godwin, an Australian human rights lawyer and author of a United Nations report calling for decriminalization, says the debate over sex workers’ role in the Asia Pacific is aimed at broadening the discussion over health and human rights issues. “It is a capacity developing process. The organizations working for the rights of sexual workers are learning from each other,” Godwin told a UN meeting earlier this year.
Most representatives of sex workers' organizations in Asia and the Pacific couldn't participate in the International AIDS Conference held in Washington last year due to U.S. visa and immigration laws. Instead, a “shadow” conference was held in Kolkata, India, where sex workers discussed the issue of decriminalization and shared lessons from their individual experiences. There is a greater chance for safer sex practices, said Godwin, if laws related to sex work are reformed.
Advocacy
Blue Diamond, a non-governmental advocacy group in Nepal, has also been pressing for a review of existing laws and policies, especially for transgender sex workers. And in Thailand, where prostitution is largely illegal but accepted, the non-governmental group SWING works with transgender and gay workers.
Surang Janyom, the director of SWING, said that most sex workers don't seek treatment out of fear. “Sex workers are afraid of going to health services,” Surang told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. “Some are more confident than others, but it is true that the laws are intimidating for most of them.”
In India, the Ashodaya Academy advocacy group based in Mysore sees its role as a “learning site” for community-led HIV interventions and capacity building. The Academy has trained more than 5,000 people over the last five years, and works with India’s National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and state-based AIDS control groups as well as with Avahan, an organization backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation dedicated to reducing the spread of HIV in India.
In Myanmar, where laws criminalize sex work, the group TOP/PSI now successfully operates 18 drop-in centers where sex workers undertake English classes and training on life skills and sexual health.
Tracey Tully, director of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, told Deutsche Welle that the main goal of the activists campaigning for sex worker’s rights was to empower them nationally as well as regionally.
And as pressures mount to institute changes in the industry, women like S are continuing to help fellow victims recover from the experience.
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