November 6, 2003

News of violent crimes against women, while horrific in nature, no longer hold shock value in society and are often well-publicized. However, the topic of prostitution or the plight of the sex industry’s workers is one that merits little discussion. Mohammad Anwar reports

Jugnoo, a 23-year-old Afghan beggar, lives in a kutchi abadi in Sohrab Goth, Karachi. She begs because she has to support her ailing parents and a brother who is a drug addict — but when she is unable to make ends meet — she resorts to prostitution.

Finding customers is never a problem for Jugnoo, since she operates from a bazaar known to be a hub, where women are bought and sold like the goods it houses. “I always wanted to get an education,” she said. “And whenever I passed by a school, I used to peep through the gates to see the children inside.” In Pakistan, the number of women like Jugnoo is growing, as the crisis in Afghanistan has caused desperate refugees to cross the border.

Last month in Lahore nine people, including an actress, were shot dead in Allama Iqbal Town. Investigations revealed that a girl was said to be the bone of contention between her family and the actress. The girl had reportedly been brought to Lahore and forced into prostitution. The police later arrested three men from Peshawar who were the relatives of the girl who had brought her to Lahore, and handed her over to an actress. The case was reported but little light was shed on these facts.

In January this year, Maulvi Sarwar Mughal, a father of eight children in Gujranwala, was arrested on charges of killing three prostitutes and injuring two others. In an interview he said that given a chance, he might have beaten the statistics of the mass murderer Javed Iqbal, who had killed 100 runaway children. “I had identified all the pick-up points and wanted to kill every single prostitute so that I could cleanse society,” said Mughal. In June Mughal surprisingly pleaded not guilty to the charges, while a complainant and an eyewitness changed their statements.

Last year, a family court in Peshawar dissolved the marriages of two minor girls, who were forced into prostitution by their in-laws. The tragic ordeal of both girls began three years ago when their mother, a widow and a poor domestic worker, unable to cope financially, agreed to a marriage proposal from two seemingly decent women.

The girls stated how they were married off to two Afghan boys in a gang, and then forced into prostitution. These two girls’ lives were saved at the behest of their mother, who filed applications with the army monitoring cell and the inspector-general of police once she discovered the truth. Both the cases were decided on “ex-parte” grounds as their husbands did not contest, ostensibly out of fear that they would have been arrested had they challenged the cases.

During the trial, the girls disclosed that their husbands were minors and gave details of their traumatic experience. According to them, their in-laws started bringing strangers to their home in Hayatabad and forced them to entertain the guests. Soon the girls were taken with other women to different houses and posh hotels, where they were forced to have sex with men. During this time, the girls were not allowed to meet their mother.

One day, however, the girls managed to use one of their clients cell phone and called their mother’s neighbour. They explained how they were suffering, and asked the neighbour to contact their mother. In April 2001, the mother began writing applications to senior officials in the military and the police. The police busted a brothel and the girls were recovered from there and returned to their mother.

Although this story had a happy ending, there are numerous unreported cases of women like these whose fate remains unchanged. While the girls were successful in having their marriages annulled, no cases have so far been brought against the people who forced them into prostitution.

There is a strange and almost paradoxical attitude towards sex in Pakistani society. People from all walks of life talk at length about sex, whether it is sharing jokes or details of their real or imaginary sexual experiences. Yet any public discourse on the subject is taboo, leaving room open for people to interpret sex in perverse ways. Whether one wants to admit it or not prostitution has always existed in Pakistan, in every city, large or small.

The sex industry is now changing rapidly. It is becoming increasingly complicated, with highly differentiated sub-sectors. Unlike the past, when it was only poor girls from lower income families who were forced into prostitution, today one finds educated women from middle class families working as sex workers. One won’t be surprised to find a college girl working as a prostitute, and chances are that she is in college because her profession pays for her tuition fees.

A study carried out of 500 women working in Lahore’s Taxali area, in the vicinity of the Tibbi police station, had some interesting results. It showed that more than 70 per cent of the women were educated up to the primary level, nine per cent up to the secondary level, and nine per cent up to the intermediate level. The remaining 11 per cent were illiterate.

An assessment of the size of the sex market in Pakistan is difficult to gauge, because the trade is largely illegal and often underground. However, the most authoritative studies available in Asia suggest that the market is vast. Furthermore, it seems that the market in Pakistan is increasingly contributing to markets in the Middle East and other parts of Asia. It is also catering to demands from England, all under the cover of troupes of dancers and singers, says Shabbir Ahmed of the Centre for Research and Social Development, Karachi.

According to different estimates more than 10,000 women are working as dancing girls in Lahore, and nearly 15,000 child sex workers are reported to operate near the Lahore railway station. There are around 10,000 sex workers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, employed by some 2,000 brothels. This number could increase because of innumerable mobile sex workers and brothels.

In March 2003, a report by the International Human Rights Monitoring, revealed that “around 800,000 women are earning their livelihood through the sex trade in Pakistan. There was a yearly increase of 138,000 female prostitutes. At present the Hira Mandi in Lahore, Sharif Pura of Pattoki, Lal Bazaar of Sukkur, Chamra Mandi of Okara, Mariam Road of Nawabshah, Kasai Gali of Rawalpindi, Napier Road of Karachi, Hira Abad of Hyderabad and Choti Gathee are the hub of the sex trade.”

When asked to describe her life as a commercial sex worker (CSW), 30-year-old Uzma said, “It is very tough. There are occupational hazards like unwanted pregnancies, painful abortions and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. In almost all red light areas, housing and sanitation facilities are poor, the localities are crowded, most sex workers are quite poor, and as if this is not bad enough, there is police harassment and violence from local thugs. To top it all we have to deal with the social indignity of being ‘sinful’, being mothers of illegitimate children, being the target of those children’s frustrations and anger.”

Many of the sex workers TR spoke to cited their family’s poor financial situation as the main reason for their turning to this profession. Some sex workers said that their first sexual experience was a commercial encounter.

In the rural areas of Pakistan, girls are often forced to work off the debt their parents have incurred. Girls rarely make enough money, and expenses such as rent, transportation and food are added to the debt, making it extremely difficult to pay it off.

Studies, however, cite other reasons that lead women into the sex industry. They vary from feelings of abandonment to being ill treated by the family, from keeping bad company to being seduced by promises of glamour and money. In some cases, a partner’s or husband’s sexual promiscuity, illicit sexual relations and even adultery have caused women to turn to prostitution. It is therefore not uncommon to find that prostitutes come from deprived and disturbed family backgrounds.

The increasing demand for commercial sex workers in cities means that young women in rural areas are more vulnerable, as they are likely to be forced or lured to the cities. According to Dr Fateh M. Burfat, chairman of the Department of Sociology at Karachi University, there is a “highway syndrome” which only increases sexual promiscuity, and aids in transporting young women from rural areas to the cities to facilitate prostitution.

The hierarchy and operational dynamics of the sex industry are very complex. There are all sorts of players involved — actors, politicians, police, local gangs, pimps, brothel owners, madams and many types of middlemen who are usually the key players, as they mediate contacts between CSWs and their clients.

In 1979, General Zia’s government enforced the Hudood Ordinance in the hope that the sex trade would be controlled, if not wiped out altogether. Singing and dancing was limited from 11 pm to 1 am in well-demarcated red-light areas of the major cities. This “law enforcement” of sorts led to CSWs moving out from the demarcated areas to posh residential areas, from where they continued to secretly operate as sex workers, without the cover of the performing arts.

This law has not been successful in stopping commercial sex work and has instead triggered off purely sexual services provision in a clandestine manner, making it accessible to a wide range of the population, says Naveed Khawaja, a team leader of a study on the mapping of commercial sex workers.

Commercial sex work in Pakistan is still illegal according to the Hudood Ordinance, but it continues under the guise of the performing arts. Due to its illegal nature, the police, pimps and community leaders exploit nearly all CSWs.

As many as 88 per cent of women prisoners in the country are languishing in jails as a result of the ambiguities in the Hudood Ordinance. This was found in a report of the special committee on the Hudood Ordinance, which was constituted by the National Commission on the Status of Women. Over 7,000 women and children, including those who are under-trial and convicted, are housed in 75 jails of the country.

Women charged with prostitution and related crimes have been shifted to a barrack in the Special Women’s Prison in Karachi, which is separated by a wall from the rest of the prison. These women have been confined to a designated area, as authorities don’t want them to mingle with other prisoners. According to Sheba Shah, in-charge of the prison, women coerce younger prisoners into joining the sex industry, and manage to arrange their bail through ‘well-wishers’, thus expanding the sex industry.

Prostitution and trafficking of women go hand in hand. Women are trafficked from all over the country and sold to prostitution dens. For example, a girl is located in remote areas of the country, taken through a long route, and she eventually, if not always, ends up in a brothel in central or southern Punjab.

Last year Iranian authorities busted a ring based in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, which was responsible for trafficking dozens of young women to Pakistan, where they were forced into prostitution. The police in Mashhad uncovered the ring after a young woman called her mother from Karachi, to tell her she had been forced into prostitution. Her mother then alerted the authorities.

The ring included two Afghans, and 30 men and women from the southern Sistan-Balochistan province. They had tracked down dozens of young women in the impoverished province, and convinced their families to marry them off to seemingly wealthy men.

The women were then transferred to Karachi, where they were sold for between Rs24,000 to Rs72,000 to mostly Afghan-run prostitution rings. Iran’s mounting economic woes have led to an explosion of street prostitution in recent years, despite the threat of strict punishment by the Islamic regime, including public lashings.

Based on official figures, about 300,000 women are engaged in the sex trade in Iran and the numbers are steadily rising. Newspapers routinely report of a crackdown on “corrupt networks” preying upon naive runaway girls from small towns.

According to various sources there are many CSWs going abroad for such tours, mostly to Arab countries, especially Dubai. Sources claim that this is clearly evident from the weekend night flights going to Dubai from Pakistan. “If these women are caught by the authorities, they are either extradited to their home country, or they are imprisoned for illegal entry,” says Zoya, a CSW who regularly visits Dubai.

The middleman arranges the cost of the trip and visa; he also gives the girl around Rs10,000 so that she can buy appropriate clothes and accessories. In addition to this he also pays around Rs20,000 to the head of the brothel.

It is unclear just how much commercial sex workers earn as it varies depending on age, sexual experience, beauty and “status”. In major cities of Pakistan, the rates range between Rs200 to Rs5,000 during the day and Rs800 to Rs10,000 for a night.

A CSW can have up to 10 or 12 clients a day. Ironically, students who frequent red light district areas and are likely to have their first sexual experience there often get discounted student rates.

Pakistani and Russian crime gangs also used to traffic women from the former Soviet to Pakistan, where fair skinned, blond women are seen as an exotic commodity by wealthy men.

Many of the women in Pakistan were reported to have previously been in Arab countries before being brought to Pakistan in 2000-1. In mid-2001, more than 15 such women were arrested from a local hotel in Saddar, Karachi, on charges of prostitution.

Despite efforts to curb the problem, trafficking of women continues in alarming proportions. In spite of the strict laws enacted in the Frontier, a recent news item about Kohat, states that the practice continues unabated in the area. Young girls, both local and Afghan, and even young boys are forced into prostitution and sent off to big cities like Peshawar and Rawalpindi.

Similarly, the practice of buying girls for marriage continues to take place in the tribal areas. For example, in the Orakzai Agency, the price of a young girl is fixed at Rs60,000. However, in some cases the price can go as high as Rs500,000, but the transaction is always made discreetly. Once bought as wives, these women can then be sold to prostitution dens or trafficked to other cities and countries.

The people’s attitude towards prostitution is quite perplexing. Some do not want to concede its existence, while others want to see its complete eradication from society, without taking ground realities into consideration. Then there are those who argue that the only way to “solve” the problem is to decriminalize prostitution.

There is no doubt that prostitution is a very real problem in Pakistan, and a direct consequence of denying a woman her inherent rights and taking away her dignity. One has to accept that prostitution is definitely a symptom of the multifaceted problem that society’s economic structure and its social mores have created. Traditional values hinder all rehabilitation efforts — but it is imperative that society move towards establishing such centres — and give women a new lease on life.

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