Ek Aurat, ek larki - One Woman, one child
Yesterday was a different kind of day here in Calcutta. I took a few of he volunteers to a lecture by Catharine MacKinnon, a feminist legal scholar and activist. To be honest, I feared that a lecture might be dull compared to the dervishly intense living we have been experiencing all week in the shelter homes and red light areas. However, Catherine spoke with such conviction and passion that it just blew me away. She has spent the last few weeks researching and meeting survivors and victims of brothel slavery through our partner agency Apne Aap – in the red light areas of Calcutta, and in Forbesgunj – a remote region of Bihar in which an entire tribal group is forced into intergenerational and systemic prostitution, starting around the age of 10.
Literally all the girls from the Nutt community are trafficked by their families into the sex trade. Women who try to leave are subject to constant harassment, beatings, and threats but nonetheless some have been brave enough to do so, with the help of Apne Aap. There is now a school in the region for 50 girls, and the adult women have started a self-help group and want to begin an income generation project. I hope we will soon be in a position to help them.
Catharine’s lecture focused on reducing demand for prostituted sex by punishing the buyers instead of the victims. Apne Aap is fighting for the passage of an amendment (5c) the Indian anti-trafficking statute which would decriminalize women in prostitution, and criminalize traffickers and buyers, as is the case in Sweden. She explained that in every country of the world, the people in prostitution are poor, disproportionately from low castes or disadvantaged classes, overwhelming female, and often tribal or minority people. Average age of entry into prostitution is 10-12. Thus, she argues that prostitution cannot really be a choice, because in order for people to have a choice, they need to have at least 2 options to choose between, and this is often not the case. She also shared the womens’ experience within prostitution, which had always included a lot of violence.
Catharine encouraged the audience to be hopeful, as these women themselves are hopeful. and she reported the five things that the women themselves said they needed in order to leave the trade:
Not surprisingly, trafficked women and children suffer from a level of post-traumatic stress disorder which is documented as higher than soldiers in active combat! This manifests itself as terror, shame, feelings of worthlessness, self-mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse to self-medicate, sleep difficulties and malnutrition. While we have certainly seen some evidence of this trauma during our activities this week, i'm happy to report that once people are removed from the situation and given support and options, they flourish like the plants growing up everywhere here, through the cement, through piles of garbage, through every hard and unrelenting surface.
Finally, Catharine invited everyone in the audience to help just one woman or child out of forced prostitution. I’m in! How about you?
