SOUTH ASIA - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

2261and ‘‘inhuman treatment.’’ On August 31, the Mumbai High Court instructed theMaharashtra government to improve conditions in its rescue homes.The country’s prostitution and trafficking laws fail to impose on the clients andorganizers of the sex trade the same penalties imposed on prostitutes found solicitingor practicing their trade in or near (200 meters) public places. Using thePITA’s provisions against soliciting or practicing, police regularly may arrest sexworkers, extort money from them, evict them, and take their children from them.The client by comparison largely is immune from any law enforcement threat, ashe has committed a crime only if he is engaged in sex with a sex worker in a publicplace or is having sex with a girl under the age of 16 years (statutory rape). Similarly,although the intention of the 1986 PITA was to focus enforcement effortsagainst the traffickers, pimps, and border operators, the opposite currently is thereality; a Calcutta NGO reports that an average of about 80 to 90 percent of thearrests made under the PITA in West Bengal state in the 1990’s are of female sexworkers. Police implementation of the PITA similarly is inadequate throughout thecountry; only a small fraction of arrests made under the PITA involve the trafficker.Implementation of the PITA’s provisions for protection and rehabilitation of womenand children who are rescued from the sex trade is extremely poor. NGO’s familiarwith the legal history of prostitution and trafficking laws regard the failure of thejudiciary to recognize this inequity in the law’s practice as a continuing ‘‘blind spot.’’Over the last several years, arrests and prosecutions under the PITA have remainedrelatively static, while all indicators suggest a growing level of trafficking into andwithin the country.NGO’s allege that ignorance of trafficking, a lack of political resolve to tackle it,and corruption at the enforcement level perpetuate the problem. Although the policeare charged with enforcing the country’s laws on prostitution and trafficking inwomen and children, NGO’s, observers, and sex workers uniformly view police actionsas part of the problem. Sex workers in Mumbai and Calcutta claim that harassment,extortion, and occasional arrests on soliciting charges usually characterizepolice intervention. The police seldom are seen as a positive force that addresses theviolence of pimps and traffickers while protecting underage girls from bonded sexlabor. A commonly held view among sex workers and NGO’s is that local police andpoliticians responsible for the red light areas receive bribes from organized crimenetworks to protect the lucrative sex trade.Over 1 million girls and women are believed to be forced into the sex industrywithin the country at any given time. Women’s rights organizations and NGO’s estimatethat more than 12,000 and perhaps as many as 50,000 women and childrenare trafficked into the country annually from neighboring states for the sex trade.According to an ILO estimate, 15 percent of the country’s estimated 2.3 million prostitutesare children. The traffic is controlled largely by organized crime.There is a growing pattern of trafficking in child prostitutes from Nepal. Accordingto one estimate, 5,000 to 7,000 children, mostly between the ages of 10 and 18,are drawn or forced into this traffic annually. Girls as young as 7 years of age aretrafficked from economically depressed neighborhoods in Nepal, Bangladesh, andrural areas of India to the major prostitution centers of Mumbai, Calcutta, andDelhi. Currently there are about 100,000 to 200,000 women and girls working inbrothels in Mumbai and 40,000 to 100,000 in Calcutta. In Mumbai an estimated 90percent of sex workers began when they were under 18 years of age; half are fromNepal. A similar profile is believed to exist among female sex workers in Calcutta,although the vast majority of women who are trafficked there come from Bangladesh,as opposed to Nepal. NGO’s in the region estimate that about 6,000 to10,000 girls are trafficked annually from Nepal to Indian brothels, and that a similarnumber are trafficked from Bangladesh.Within the country, women from economically depressed areas often move into thecities seeking greater economic opportunities, and once there are victimized by traffickerswho force or coerce them into the sex trade. However, in some cases familymembers sell young girls into the sex trade. For example, according to a local NGOresearcher, in one village in Uttar Pradesh, girls 1 to 2 years of age are purchasedfrom their parents and adopted by persons who train them for the sex trade throughthe use of pornographic materials, and sell them into the sex trade when they are7 to 12 years old.Many indigenous tribal women are forced into sexual exploitation. According tothe Indian Center for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ICITP), more than 40,000 tribalwomen, mainly from Orissa and Bihar, were forced into economic and sexual exploitation;many come from tribes that were driven off their land by national parkschemes. In Punjab persons of both sexes are sold in an organized trade in weekendbazaars, ostensibly as farm labor; many instead are purchased for the purposes ofVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:46 Sep 20, 2001 Jkt 071555 PO 00000 Frm 00105 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\COUNTRYR\S71555\71555.035 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1