January 20, 2002

Recent studies conclude that widespread prostitution is fast becoming one of the biggest issues facing Asian and American societies

APPARENT scars to the physical features of a city, country or a society can be quite injurious to a nation’s identity and liberty, like the World Trade Centre disaster on Sept 11, which levelled a major section of New York at Fifth Avenue. But within a decade, America is expected to erect much more imposing structures in place of the twin towers.

But if a nation suffers from a slow-spreading moral malaise, it would be hard to conceal the cracks even in a hundred years, and deal a direct and lethal blow to the soul of the people.

Millions of men and women all over the world, as well as in America, are becoming slaves to the worldwide gangs and mafia of flesh trade. Widespread prostitution is fast becoming one of the biggest and complex issues facing Asian and American societies. This fact was borne out by the studies conducted in America during the recent Regional Project for South Asia on trafficking of women and children.

Human Rights workers from all over South Asia saw the situation as it stands in some of the major states of the huge continent. It found that the US government is countering the notorious epidemic with the help of converted insiders, who preach cleaner and controlled lives to their ex-colleagues in the oldest profession, in conjunction with their state department sponsors.

Globally, prostitution is becoming more institutionalized and industrialized, with some powerful agents and institutions advocating its increasing legitimization and legalization. Complex worldwide networks seem to be working in massage parlours, beauty clinics, showbiz industries and nursing houses, and a flourishing flesh trade is carrying on recruitment and trafficking to fill brothels, bars, street corners, ground rings and clubs all over Asia and Africa.

However, the most alarming aspect is that the influx of most sexual workers of Asia, Europe and Africa into America, in a big way, is inflating the statistical figures into a balloon that may burst very soon. Prostitution has been characterized as the world’s oldest profession. Prostitutes may be of either sex, but throughout history, the majority has been women, reflecting the traditional socio-economic dependence of women.

An estimated 20 million people, 90 per cent of them women and children, are in the global sex trade. The sex industry takes in US$3.6 billion. The largest sex industry centre in South-East Asia is in the city of Surbaya, Indonesia, which consists of hectares and hectares of modest houses with large plate-glass windows where girls sit and wait for customers. This area is also a magnet for divorced and dispossessed women. Reports indicate that women from Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, India, Bangladesh and China are trafficked into prostitution to the US through the organized smuggling network of Asian gangs. The network is extensive and may be connected with an interstate chain of massage parlours and brothels crisscrossing the country from California to Rhode Island.

Philippines is the world’s top exporter of women, sending more than a quarter of a million (250,000) women to 168 countries, annually. More than half-a-million Filipino adults and children are involved in sex trade in the Philippines and cater to tourists. Some 150,000 Filipinos work in brothel houses, bars and nightclubs in Japan where they are sold for US$2,400-18,000. The government does nothing to combat or eradicate prostitution because it makes $8 billion annually through this heinous trade.

In the five American states which we visited as members of the Asian Human Rights troupe in August 2001, we found the government specially concerned about trafficking and prostitution. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Raleigh are test-case quarantines, where the men and women who have recuperated with state help are recruited to create a sympathetic atmosphere for those who want to leave this abyss, but are forced to cling on due to difficult economic circumstances.

While we were all stunned and later depressed by the Sept 11 disaster and found all air passages sealed for our return, the concern for these afflicted women remained uppermost in our minds as well as in the minds of our hosts. We saw and met some of the victims and the converted insiders, being used as buffers to educate and counsel those still trapped in the vicious trade. There are a number of organizations founded by former sex workers in the US to help their community to have control on their lives. Norma Hotaling, an ex-prostitute, has now become the director of SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation) and unfolded her story of abuse. Her strong stand against brutalization and drugs helped her come out of the situation she had suffered for so long. Her NGO offers programmes which include shelter, counselling and educational programmes to prostitutes across the country.

Another example of a successful HIV/AIDS outreach programme is an NGO called CALPEP (California Prostitutes Educating Prostitutes). This organization’s interaction programme drew our attention as we entered its mobile unit vehicle which rides along with its representatives on the routes to meet risk groups on the streets and counsel them on Friday and Saturday nights. Their mobile unit caters to victims through HIV testing, distribution of contraceptives and guidelines and advocacy for those depressed. A large number of trans-gender people are seen among them who carry the same complaints against pimps and customers as the rest of the sex workers. Calpep has produced a documentary that shows how helpless these professionals are in the hands of their clients, buyers and abductors.

All over the world, prostitution has raised the graph of HIV/AIDS among the women community. Last year, about 16.4 million women got infected worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls are six times more likely to be infected with HIV than boys; there are 12-13 African women currently infected for every 10 African men. Today, almost 1.2 million children under the age of 15 are living with HIV/AIDS, and most of the transmissions are mother-to-child. Among those, 30pc are South-East Asian women. Over 47,000 Nepalese, 3 million people in Kenya and over half-a-million adults in Brazil live with HIV/AIDS. A number of cases are still unreported.

Prostitutes of a higher level were usually skilled dancers and singers in olden times. Those of the highest level — the hetaerae — kept salons where politicians met, and this caused them to often attain power and influence. In mediaeval times, licensed brothels flourished throughout Europe, yielding enormous revenues to government officials and corrupt churchmen. In Asia, where women were lowly regarded and no religious deterrent existed, prostitution was accepted as natural. The main reason for South-East Asian women to enter prostitution was economic. These days, girls and women who fall into prostitution come from families that have many children, where there are faced with economic problems and a constant fight for survival. The other problem that has led women into prostitution is the structural adjustment programme, creating a new kind of poverty. These programmes have led to people being dislocated from their homes.

Others take up prostitution simply to have money to be fashionable. Such girls, at a certain point in their lives, choose prostitution on their own. Kamathipura in Mumbai, with an area of 2.5sq kms, is one of the largest brothels in South Asia. Around 17,000 women and girls are exploited sexually day and night. An NGO called Apne Aap was formed to raise awareness and take initiative to end sex trafficking and support marginalized women and girls. It provides contraceptives among the victims to slow down the rate of HIV/AIDS, which is close to 95pc.

According to the Punjab AIDS control programme, prostitutes constitute the highest-risk group for AIDS in Pakistan. Official statistics of AIDS in 2000 were 1,700 cases. However, United Nations’ figures reveal that around 80,000 people are HIV positive. Shahi Mohallah in Lahore, attracts customers immediately after sunset through the tabla, gunghroo and perfume, while food stalls equally participate in the business. Some prostitutes enjoy power and control within the system. Although it is invisible, but the involvement of landlords and law-enforcement agencies exists. The last army regime made the vital blunder of coming down hard on such a community and its particular business area, without any analysis as to what will follow after this crackdown. It resulted in the mushroom spread of several pockets of prostitution and call-girls in elite residential areas of the city.

In the early 90s, when trafficking was at its peak in the country, specially Karachi, some NGOs and individuals came forward to raise the issue and seek justice for the victims. What had been promulgated in the name of the Zina Hudood Ordinance, in fact, goes against the victims. Under the ordinance, many Bengali girls were put behind bars, where they were brutalized and only their pimps were their well-wishers who bailed them out to re-run their business by reselling this afflicted lot.

A very prominent TV serial was telecast in this era, based on the novel of Shaukat Siddiqui’s Jangloos, which revealed the landlords’ business to exchange wives for a night. Unfortunately, our policies cannot bear the truth, and the serial was banned. Legislators and politicians have always avoided addressing the issue. A large number of Bengali communities exist in the country where prostitution is very common. These trafficked women are forced into such business where they have no way out. Whenever there is a raid, only girls are captured, no one questions the touts, pimps or their clients.

The Internet is now being employed to promote the global prostitution industry. This cyber network is being used to promote and engage in the buying and selling of women and children. Commercial prostitution tours are advertised, where agents offer catalogues of mail-order brides, with girls as young as 13 years. New technology has enabled an online merger of pornography and prostitution, with video conferencing bringing live sex shows to the Internet. The site called World Sex Guide provides comprehensive sex-related information about every country in the world, which includes photographs of brothels, entrances, road signs, currency exchange rates, names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Recently, in our neighbouring country, activists and prostitutes gathered to talk about the issue and launched a campaign to combat the legalization of prostitution and its legitimization as sex work. In the state of Victoria, Australia, brothel prostitution was legalized in the 80s. Each week, 60,000 Victorian men spend about $7 million on prostitution. This campaign brought into focus some solutions regarding these highlighted problems, such as the need to amend and enforce laws to bring pimps, procurers and traffickers to justice; develop and implement policies and programmes to provide assistance to prostitutes and an alternative to sexual exploitation. It was indicated during the course of the campaign that such a programme would solve problems such as criminals’ involvement in the industry, unregulated expansion and violence against street prostitutes. But the fact of the matter is that legalization has solved none of the problems and has led to the mushrooming of many more.

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