{"id":3058,"date":"2019-09-08T14:51:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-08T14:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2019-09-08T14:51:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T14:51:16","slug":"the-bangladesh-brothels-where-men-pay-child-brides-for-sex-while-police-look-the-other-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.hopetoheal.org.za\/staging\/2019\/09\/08\/the-bangladesh-brothels-where-men-pay-child-brides-for-sex-while-police-look-the-other-way\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bangladesh brothels where men pay child brides for sex \u2013 while police look the other way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"In
In Bangladesh, sex work and child marriage are legal \u2013 and the two have become intrinsically linked\u00a0CREDIT:\u00a0ALLISON JOYCE <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By \u00a0Corinne Redfern<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sex work is legal in Bangladesh. So is child marriage. Now in an exclusive investigation, The Telegraph<\/em> can reveal the two have become intrinsically linked<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a circular bruise blossoming on the right hand side of 19-year-old Rupa Begum\u2019s cheek, and she\u2019s working hard to cover it. Gently, she smears pale concealer over her face with her fingertips and blends it into the skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She checks her reflection in a small turquoise mirror, and breaks into a smile. \u201cNow nobody can tell anything happened,\u201d she says, sitting back on her faded floral bedspread. \u201cWhen the next customer comes, he doesn\u2019t want to see what the last one did to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 9.30am on a Tuesday morning, and outside Rupa\u2019s windowless bedroom, the Bangladeshi brothel corridors are already thick with the smell of spices and sweat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Men of all ages in stained polo-shirts and traditionally knotted \u2018lunghi\u2019 elbow each other out the way as they make their way through the maze of brightly-painted concrete alleyways and narrow streets to find their chosen girl and hand over 200 taka [\u00a31.75] for ten minutes of sexual activity before work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Kandipara \u2013 one of Bangladesh\u2019s estimated 20 legal brothel \u201cvillages\u201d, with approximately 400 sex workers employed within its mildewed pink and green concrete walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Bangladeshi law, everyone employed by the brothel is supposed to be over 18 and in possession of a State Magistrate issued license that declares they\u2019re fully prepared to work in prostitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But clamber past the crowds of wide-eyed girls squatting on red plastic buckets by the entrance to step inside, and you hear a different story. It\u2019s thought that at least 10 per cent of men in Bangladesh will pay for sex in their lifetimes<\/a>, but out of 375 sex workers surveyed on behalf of Girls Not Brides<\/a><\/em> across four such brothels in Bangladesh last year, 47 per cent were former child brides, trafficked into prostitution against their will<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once inside the brothels, they\u2019re imprisoned \u2013 held captive until they can save up enough money to buy their freedom, and vulnerable to violence, disease and psychological abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business transactions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Rupa waits tight in her bedroom, flicking absentmindedly between channels on the portable TV in the corner. An hour ago her phone screen lit up with a missed call from one of her regulars; their private sign that he\u2019s on his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis one isn\u2019t violent,\u201d she says, lifting her sleeve to show a ladder of raised scars and blistered cigarette burns: some self-inflicted, some not. \u201cI get scared when the men start forcing me to do things I haven\u2019t agreed to,\u201d she says. \u201cThey say that they\u2019re paying me for a service, so it\u2019s my job to make them happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I get scared when the men start forcing me to do things I haven\u2019t agreed toRupa Begum”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d like to use condoms, she adds, but the 10 \u2013 12 customers she sees daily tend to object. While condom usage in Kandipara used to hover at about 40 per cent 20 years ago<\/a>, following free distribution and peer awareness programmes, their popularity now appears to be on the decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the last NGO-run medical clinic closed its doors in the brothel in 2014 due to funding cuts, and Rupa hasn\u2019t been tested for any STIs since. This is despite multiple studies showing HIV and STD rates are steadily increasing within the high-risk demographic, potentially giving rise to \u201ca possible HIV epidemic<\/a>\u201d in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think I know what HIV is, but I don\u2019t know if I have it,\u201d says Jinuk, 16, who\u2019s been working in Kandipara for three years. \u201cNone of us do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been five years since Rupa was trafficked into the brothel.\u00a0Married at 11 years old<\/a>\u00a0to a man in his 30s who she\u2019d never met, she spent her wedding day playing hide and seek with her cousins in the mud. \u201cI ripped off pieces of my sari to make a little wedding dress for my doll,\u201d she remembers. \u201cWhen my husband raped me that night, I didn\u2019t understand what was happening. I only felt pain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She fell pregnant shortly after \u2013 but when her husband was killed in an accident at work, her family refused to take her back. \u201cThey said they couldn\u2019t afford to look after me or my son. I wasn\u2019t a virgin any more, so no other man would marry me.\u201d Hungry and alone, the then 13-year-old took a train to Dhaka in the hope of finding work in a garment factory. \u201cA woman saw me crying at the station, and said she had a friend who was looking for a maid,\u201d Rupa says. \u201cI followed her home, but she sold me here instead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Coordinator for Girls Not Brides Bangladesh on behalf of BRAC, Habibur Rahman says Rupa\u2019s story echoes the experiences of thousands of teenage girls across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a very patriarchal society, where a girl\u2019s worth is defined solely by her potential to find a husband,\u201d he says. \u201cUnfortunately, marriage at that age makes them all the more vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. On many occasions, they flee their husbands and fall directly into the hands of the traffickers themselves, but we do hear about girls whose husbands sell them to the brothels directly. I can\u2019t even estimate how many end up forced into sex work every year, but I know it\u2019s a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I like visiting girls who are younger than me, but who still know what they\u2019re doing” – Mohammed Shohagmia <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human trafficking may be punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty in Bangladesh, yet the madams at Kandipara, Mymensingh, Daulatdia and Jessore brothels all maintain they\u2019re operating within the limits of the law. For three days following her arrival at Kandipara, Rupa says she was locked in a room and beaten whenever she tried to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was fed Oradexon \u2013 cow steroids \u2013 in a bid to force her body to develop and make her gain weight to look older. \u201cWhen I was eventually sent to the police station to make my license, I was so scared of being hurt again that I just repeated what my madam had told me to say: that I was 18, and that I was happy to work in the brothel because I had no other options.\u201d The police are paid approximately 10,000 taka [\u00a387.50] for every license they process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such hazy legalisation of sex work is all the justification many in Bangladesh need in order to view the buying and selling of underage girls as a \u201cbusiness\u201d. One trafficker, who asks to go by his initials, AMA, estimates that he\u2019s trafficked at least 27 girls over the past eight years into Kandipara \u2013 travelling across the country by public transport to the cities of Dhaka and Chittagong to collect them and bring them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a transaction,\u201d he says. \u201cI receive a phone call from someone who has a girl, and I buy her for 20,000 taka [\u00a3175], before transporting the girl across the country and sell her for 10,000 taka [\u00a387.50] more.\u201d The younger the girl, the more money he makes \u2013 charging up to 50,000 taka [\u00a3439] for a 13 or 14 year old, and specifically targeting girls who have already been married \u201cbecause they make less of a fuss\u201d. He\u2019s not concerned about the police, he adds. \u201cIf they stop me, I say I\u2019m the girl\u2019s boyfriend, and they leave us alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customers also pay more for former child brides. \u201cI like visiting girls who are younger than me, but who still know what they\u2019re doing,\u201d says Mohammed Shohagmia, 38, who has been visiting the brothel for 20 years. \u201cOlder women can be more badly behaved and won\u2019t always do what I tell them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of control<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Azharul Islam is the Program Manager of Rights Jessore, an internationally funded Bangladeshi NGO working to counteract child trafficking both across the Bangladesh-India border and within the confines of the country itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Islam maintains that neither the police nor the elite anti-crime unit Rapid-Action Battalion [RAB] prioritises the health and safety of child brides \u2013 a particularly vulnerable demographic commonly deemed \u2018a lost cause\u2019 by society.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 18 per cent (according to UNICEF figures), Bangladesh has the world\u2019s highest rate of marriage involving girls under 15 \u2013 a statistic likely to rise following the amendment to the Child Marriage Restraint Act in March 2017, effectively reducing the legal age of marriage to zero and potentially legitimising statutory rape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe more child brides there are in this country, the more girls are vulnerable to trafficking and sex work,\u201d says Islam. \u201cBut everyone from the brothel owners to local law enforcement officials are involved in the same gangs, which means that our access as an NGO to the brothels is restricted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, Rights Jessore have had to implement measures so that they can surpass local police and go straight to the superintendent or the Home Office \u2013 who can then tell the police to cooperate. \u201cBut most of the time, the police do not receive our requests positively. They say they are too busy and that they have other priorities than looking for lost little girls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One police officer who says he\u2019s determined to change this is 35-year-old Mohammad Ashra Fulalan. As Town Sub Inspector for the northern city of Mymensingh, he\u2019s responsible for policing the town\u2019s brothel of 350 sex workers \u2013 intervening whenever large-scale fights break out in the brothel\u2019s many independently-run bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fulalan says he has been working for the past two years to reduce rates of trafficking to Mymensingh brothel \u2013 but admits the national system of a five-to-seven minute long interview to discuss incoming sex workers\u2019 ages and intentions is flawed, and that most of the information he receives is false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t ask for birth certificates because nobody has one. I don\u2019t know if the girls are scared \u2013 but we do know that they are clearly taught what to say, because they all give me the same answers.\u201d He has a one year old daughter at home, he adds. \u201cBut I don\u2019t have much experience in talking to teenage girls.\u201dThe more child brides there are in Bangladesh, the more girls are vulnerable to trafficking and sex work CREDIT: ALLISON JOYCE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, police headquarters in Dhaka arranged ten days of district-level anti trafficking training, but Fulanan says under-staffing meant he couldn\u2019t spare his police force from service for two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf an underage girl came to me and says she wants to leave and return to her family, then I would buy her a bus ticket home and speak to the driver to ensure she gets there,\u201d he says. \u201cBut no girls ask me for help. I do feel really helpless.\u201d He had plans to install condom vending machines to reduce STI rates within the brothel, but they were abandoned after the madams questioned who would receive the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n