[DAWN] OF all the crimes committed against children — especially the daughters of the poor in Pakistan — the most horrendous is the trafficking of girls. It is more agonising than rape. The sex trade amounts to torture. The girls who are snatched and taken away to be sold into forced prostitution have to live with this hideous evil night after night. Only a few lucky ones manage to escape or are rescued.Yet this is our most well-known secret. It is a multi-million rupee (dollars for smugglers) business. No names are mentioned. Numerous international law instruments recognise the trafficking of girls as a violation of their rights, but these laws are weak in their implementation mechanisms and, hence, there is a general apathy towards this heinous crime. The few that are working on this issue say that even the police in general do not understand the legal implications of kidnapping, trafficking and smuggling. I add to this the general misogynist attitude that women are to blame.
Who is involved? There are not just the traffickers who mint money. The customers, many of them alleged to be men in positions of power and influence, provide the much-needed support that sustains this business. It is a beehive that no one dares to touch. To do so would amount to stepping on too many toes.
Confided in me by their mother, one case of two young girls has haunted me for months and prompted me to tell you this story. These girls certainly did not deserve this fate. Their only ‘fault’ was their gender, their tender age, their being fatherless and, above all, poverty. They were forcibly abducted two years ago.
All that the police now say is that the man (the girls’ stepbrother) who had snatched them then ‘sublet’ them to another man (probably an agent) for, it is believed, prostitution. For a man who has never held a steady job, this became a source of steady income. He was receiving Rs70,000 per month for his vile investment in trafficking. Stakes are high in the sex market, and one policeman described this as a ‘Dubai for a man of no means’. The others in the chain would be earning more. The network is big and its size provides protection to all. I have heard of millions changing hands in this ‘profession’ in the course of one night.
This is the reality of human trafficking and sex slavery. Advocates working for the recovery of such children — who end up in brothels, on the streets or as beggars — believe that this crime is on the rise. In 2010, 1,570 children went missing, were trafficked or kidnapped. In 2016, this figure had jumped to 2,452. Since no data is officially recorded, these are guesstimates.