WUNRN
NEPAL – QUAKE SURVIVORS FACE THREAT FROM HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKERS
Criminal networks
using cover of rescue effort to target poor rural communities in country from
which an estimated 15,000 girls are trafficked a year, warn NGOs
Armed Nepalese police help people in Sindhupalchok district board a helicopter to Kathmandu after last month’s earthquake. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
Jason
Burke in Kathmandu – 5 May 2015
Tens of thousands
of young women from regions devastated by the earthquake in Nepal
are being targeted by human traffickers supplying a network of brothels across
south Asia, campaigners in Kathmandu and affected areas say.
The 7.8-magnitude
quake, which killed more than 7,000 people, has devastated poor rural
communities, with hundreds of thousands losing their homes and possessions.
Girls and young women in these communities have long been targeted by
traffickers, who abduct them and force them into sex work.
The UN and local
NGOs estimate 12,000 to 15,000 girls a year are trafficked from
Nepal. Some are taken overseas, to South Korea and as far as South
Africa. But the majority end up in Indian brothels where tens of thousands are
working in appalling conditions.
As
the stricken country waits for concerted aid, its resourceful people try to
keep up hope in the face of anguish.
“This is the
time when the brokers go in the name of relief to kidnap or lure women. We are
distributing assistance to make people aware that someone might come to lure
them,” said Sunita Danuwar, Director of Shakti Samuha, an NGO in Kathmandu. “We are
getting reports of [individuals] pretending to go for rescuing and looking at
people.”
Senior western aid
officials in the Nepalese capital are also concerned. “There is nothing like an
emergency when there is chaos for opportunities to … traffic more women. There
is a great chance that everything that is bad happening in Nepal could scale
up,” said one.
Sita, 20, told the
Guardian how she had been taken from her village in Sindhupalchok, the hill
area north of Kathmandu, to the Indian border town of Siliguri where she was
sold to a brothel owner, repeatedly beaten, systematically raped by hundreds of
men and infected with HIV. “I do not have nightmares about my time there. I
have erased it from my memory,” she said.
Last month’s quake
killed more than 3,000 people in Sindhupalchok, and left hundreds of thousands
homeless.
“The earthquake
will definitely increase the risk of abuse,” said Rashmita Shashtra, a local
health worker. “People here are now desperate and will take any chance. There
are spotters in the villages who convince family members and local brokers who
do the deal. We know who they are.”
Sita, who was
rescued last year, was taken by an uncle “for a job” in India.
Her parents, who are subsistence farmers and illiterate, believed assurances
she would have a good job and be able to send back her wages.
In the brothel in
Siliguri, Sita was forced to have unprotected sex with up to 20 or 30 men a
day, seven days a week for a year. When the premises was raided by police, she
told officials she wanted to return home and was handed over to an NGO.
“I am worried now
for the other girls who might be taken away. They will need the money and be
tempted if someone talks to them about a job. Then the same thing will happen
to them as happened to me,” Sita said.
Nepal, one of the
poorest countries in Asia, is the focal point of well organised smuggling
networks dealing in everything from tiger skins to precious woods, from
narcotics to people.