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The
Force of Trafficking
Tahira is one of the 800,000 women sex workers in Pakistan. Now 30, she
was forced into the trade when she was only 15 years old.
With her seven-year-old daughter Ishrat, Tahira lives in Heera Mandi, the
red light area in the eastern town of Lahore, Pakistan's second largest
city. Their two-roomed apartment is anything but grand, and they share the
place with a family of three. She is pleased about living with a family,
because there is little security in the neighborhood for a single parent
and her child.
Married off at age 13 to a much older man, Tahira was abused by her
husband; she ran away, and then met a man she thought she was in love
with. "He left me too," she recalls. And her family turned her away,
because they wanted her to continue living with her husband. "My only
friend at that time was a sex worker who took me in. I travelled with her
to Karachi where business was better."
Briefly, she flirted with dreams of getting out of her wretched life, but
all she had was a man who wanted her to continue the trade and a daughter
to look after. Back in Lahore, she tried working as a domestic help but
there too, she was often forced into sex with "the debauched men-folk of
those homes".
"There's no way out," says Tahira. "Why then should I not pursue the
clients who pay compensation for my services?"
Tahira's story is perhaps not much different from that of many others in
the sex trade. According to a recent report by International Human Rights
Monitoring (IHRM), a national rights group, the sex trade is thriving in
Pakistan.
While adultery, if proven, is punishable under the Islamic laws, the
country has a specific law that prohibits prostitution. Under the
Suppression of Prostitution Ordinance 1961, running a brothel, enticing or
leading a woman or a girl to prostitution and forcing a woman or a girl to
have a sexual intercourse with any man are punishable crimes.
The number of sex workers in Pakistan is increasing primarily due to
poverty, says IHRM Executive Director Ulfat Kazmi. According to him, more
than 100,000 are added to the trade every year. Official estimates say at
least 45 million people in a population of 140 million live in abject
poverty.
The IHRM report says that "As many as 44 per cent women resort to sex
trade due to poverty, 32 per cent by deception, 18 per cent due to
coercion, four per cent due to surroundings [born to sex workers] and only
2 per cent are involved in the sex trade at their own will."
On the other hand, the nationwide rights group - the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) - says that trafficking in women is rampant,
and that a sizeable number of women forced into the trade are brought into
Pakistan from Bangladesh, through India.
The HRCP claims are substantiated by international reports, which say that
a number of women are brought into Pakistan from Bangladesh to serve as
sex workers or as bonded domestic labor. All this despite the fact that
last year, the Pakistani government enacted the Prevention and Control of
Human Trafficking Ordinance, envisaging strict punishment for those
involved in trafficking, particularly in women and children.
Apart from trafficking specific to the sex trade, the practice of selling
women and girls is also widely prevalent. "In Swat (in the North West
Frontier province, NWFP), a woman could be bought for no more than Rs
10,000 (1US$=Rs60). In Sindh and Balochistan, the selling of daughters as
young as 10 years to suitors willing to pay their families money ranging
from Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 was reported," said the HRCP State of Human
Rights Report 2002.
What is more alarming is the forced prostitution of boys and girls under
18 years of age, despite a specific provision in the Pakistan Penal Code.
This provision makes the transport or import of a girl under-18 for
purposes of prostitution an offence, punishable with a 10-year
imprisonment or fine or both.
A study by the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development (NCCWD)
- never made public because of its controversial findings - reported the
prevalence of commercial exploitation of children. "Due to cultural and
religious factors, commercial sexual activity is kept underground, but its
existence is well known and acknowledged by many sectors of society
including law enforcers," said the report.
According to this report, "Girls of families involved in prostitution
start selling their bodies at an early age of 11 or 12 years...as in most
Asian societies, there is a premium on virginity."
While there are only a few "known" areas for sex trade in the country,
like Heera Mandi where Tahira works, the trade is otherwise conducted
through a net of connections. "The sex business is also being run under
cover of family clinics, maternity centers, marriage bureaus, beauty
parlors and
guest houses," the IHRM report points out.
Predictably so, sex workers have no recourse to any protection. "I can't
approach the police if a client refused to pay after availing my services,
because I know I would be exploited, and if I resist, they will take me in
for violating one law or the other," says Tahira.
In a country whose people are religiously conservative, civil society
organizations cannot raise the issue of the rights and protection of sex
workers. According to a World Bank report, commercial sex workers and
their clients have insufficient access to information about HIV/AIDS and
STDs. Besides, sex workers often lack the power to negotiate safe sex and
seek treatment for STDs.
Only recently has some initiative been taken to educate sex workers on
contraceptives so as to minimize the risk and spread of STDs. ActionAid
Pakistan runs one such counselling centre in Lahore's Heera Mandi.
"The ActionAid centre educated us about personal hygiene and safe sex
practices and provided us free condoms. Even if I am doomed to live this
life, I feel better off health-wise," says Tahira.
– Muddassir Rizvi
June 22, 2003
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
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