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The
Survivors
"Survivor" is the
name chosen by those who have been trafficked into the sex trade
and are now ‘free’ —though not free from society’s
stigma and marginalization.
Bimala, 23, was trafficked at 13. She is
back in Nepal and wants to get married. She is HIV Positive.
These are young girls, some
as young as 12, who are kidnapped, sold or lured by ruthless
traffickers who in turn sell them to brothel owners in major
cities in South Asia and all around the world. After years
of enslavement, forced to accept up to 25 clients a night, most
of these young girls only find freedom when their body succumb
to AIDS and other diseases and can no longer perform the work.
Some of them find their way
back home, not knowing where else to go. Yet home is the very
same place that will reject them. Society does not want
another ‘Bombay wali,’ or girl worker from Bombay. Nor
does their village, and certainly not their family. Faced
by shame and stigma, some, like Bimala, choose to go back to
glittering Bombay. Bimala tried to escape her stepmother’s
reproaches: “Now I’ll have to feed you!” She is
convinced her stepmother was the one who sold her in the first
place. Bimala eventually returned home again only to find
out she is HIV positive.
Kalpana, 24, with her son at the family's
teahouse, where an ad on condom protection against AIDS is
posted.
Tragically, Kalpana was trafficked at the
age of 15 and now has AIDS.
Upon return from Bombay,
Kalpana was forced to marry a man who soon divorced her. She had
a son and had to go back to his father’s house. His father, an
alcoholic, beat her and took any money she will get from aid
organizations. She has had AIDS for 6 years. She could not even
find a school who would accept her son. Now she is the
chairperson of the Women Cooperative that runs the Masala
Factory.
Before
It IsToo Late
When we met Deepa in
December 2002, her face was darkened by clouds of sadness.
Upon return from Bombay to her village, she got married and had
two children. Soon, life with her alcoholic husband became
unbearable. She suffered from AIDS and could barely walk.
Her last words before we left were: “I only want to die.”
Deepa passed away in
January, just one month after we last saw her.
Photos
courtesy of Chelo Alvarez and Canal Plus Spain
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