Print
this page
Email
this page Newsletters - Slavery and the Family
Bangladesh
The work of the Church of Bangladesh Social Development Programme’s (CBSDP) ‘Women and Child Trafficking Project’ began after one of its Regional Manager’s attention was drawn to the nightly movement of smugglers across Meherpur District’s long border with India. For not only were consumer goods, illicit arms and drugs flowing nightly in and out of Bangladesh, but even more profitable was the trade in human flesh – mostly young women between the ages of 12 and 25.
A senior officer from the Bangladesh Rifles, who police the border, acknowledged that there was a problem, but pointed out that it was difficult to apprehend the older women or men with young girls in tow, as they would claim legitimate reasons for travel such as hospital visits and the girls would assure them that the trafficker was in fact a relative.
In fact very few women or children are actually kidnapped, the stereotypical view of trafficking. They go very willingly, even paying for the service. However, the bright future and good jobs they are all promised never materialise, for they have been lied to, manipulated and deceived.
Usually the first in a chain of traffickers will be a relative or neighbour. He or she then lures the girl across the border with false promises; money changes hands; she is passed on to an ‘uncle/aunt’; soon she finds herself in place where the language is strange, food different and the location totally unknown. An unmarried girl from the traditional conservative villages of rural Bangladesh would normally never have kissed, held hands or even talked to an unrelated man. She is also proud and would fiercely defend her honour and her virginity, so adaptation to life as a full or part-time sex worker (the fate of up to 300,000 previously trafficked young Bengali women) does not come easily.
Traffickers know this, so to break their victim’s spirit, reduce her sense of self-worth, and make her too fearful to say ‘no,’ they typically lock her in a small room for around a week and a gang of men repeatedly rape her, starve her and – if she objects to the unspeakable ways in which they are sexually abusing her – beat her till she bleeds or torture her: for example, by forcing her head into a bucket of water until she begins to drown.
By the time she is sold into a brothel in India or a nightclub in the Middle East, she has no strength to resist and she is worked like a machine. In fact, in some places girls are forcibly given injections of drugs to enable them to service the sexual needs of more clients, up to 15 nightly.
Some are free to leave after a period of time but many are forcibly held and, unless they escape, only released if they lose their looks or their health through contracting an infection such as AIDS. Arriving back, they are viewed not as victims but as immoral despicable women, who might corrupt society. So they are alienated, insulted and often driven from their communities. Some of these girls may have been lucky enough to earn up to US$600 per month, which seems a fortune to Bangladeshis, but this is frequently squandered by the relatives that it is sent to, so most girls return to the poverty they have left.
The CBSDP, through funding from Church Mission Society’s Setting Captives Free campaign, has tried to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ by: healing the brokenhearted through counselling; enabling deliverance through skills-training; recovering sight for the community through awareness-raising; and setting trafficked women at liberty through advocacy work with local authorities. All this work has been under-girded with prayer from within Bangladesh and around the world.
Raising awareness through colourful posters, leaflets and talks in schools, madrassas, community groups and churches means that it will be harder to trick young women with false promises. Men and older women in their communities will also look out for traffickers and prevent them taking vulnerable young women away.
Skills-training rebuilds the self-confidence, self-value and community status of the young women, as well as tackling the poverty that made them vulnerable to traffickers in the first place. Already, in the last one and a half years, CBSDP has trained around 100 formerly trafficked or vulnerable women through its three-month tailoring and embroidery course, then assisted them in setting up businesses. Counselling will help them to overcome the trauma they have faced.
Meanwhile advocacy through seminars has been used with local government officials, border guard officers, local community leaders and senior police officers. One of the seminars sparked the first arrest of traffickers recorded in the district concerned: a few days after the seminar, a couple were arrested who had already allegedly trafficked 25 young girls across the border.
The local community has also been very active, with leaders from the development groups that have been set up by CBSDP taking an active role in spreading awareness messages. Perhaps most effective of all has been the entertaining but serious dramas, in which volunteers go from village to village and act out the story of a trafficked girl. This not only warns people of the dangers of trafficking but challenges societal attitudes to its victims.
Top
