Nick Kristof’s Tuesday Column – Sanctuary for Sex Slaves
Nick talks about how poverty leaves people vulnerable to slavery and what you can do to help solve the problem.
If the thought has ever flitted through your mind that your spouse isn’t 100 percent perfect, then just contemplate what Shakira Parveen is going through. And give your own husband or wife a hug.
When Ghulam Fareed proposed marriage to Ms. Parveen, he fingered prayer beads and seemed gentle and pious. Ms. Parveen didn’t know him well, but she and her family were impressed.
“The first month of marriage was O.K.,” Ms. Parveen recalled. “And then he said, you have to do whatever I tell you. If I tell you to sleep with other men, you have to do that.”
It turned out that Mr. Fareed was running a brothel and selling drugs, and he intended Ms. Parveen to be his newest prostitute. “I said, ‘No, I don’t want to sleep with other men,’ ” she said, but he beat her unconscious with sticks, broke her bones and at one point set fire to her clothes. Finally, she broke and assented.
Her “husband” locked her up in one room, she said, and the only people she saw were customers. “For two years, I never left the house,” she said.
This kind of neo-slavery is the plight of millions of girls and young women (and smaller numbers of boys) around the world, particularly in Asia. A major difference from 19th-century slavery is that these victims are dead of AIDS by their 20s.
Finally, Ms. Parveen was able to escape and return to her family, but Mr. Fareed was furious and began to torment her family, saying he would let up only if she returned to the brothel as his prostitute. Then Mr. Fareed’s gang pressured Ms. Parveen by kidnapping her younger brother, Uzman, who was in the fifth grade. Uzman says that his hands and feet were shackled, and he was raped daily by many different men, apparently pimped to paying customers.
The gang members explained that they would release the boy if Ms. Parveen returned to the brothel, and she contemplated suicide.
After six weeks, Uzman escaped while his captors became drunk and left him unshackled. But when Ms. Parveen and her parents went to the police, the officers just laughed at them. Mr. Fareed and other gang members worked hand and glove with the police, the family says.
Indeed, the police even arrested Ms. Parveen’s father, who is one-legged because of a train accident (that is one reason for the family’s poverty). Apparently on the gang’s orders, the police held him for two weeks, in which time he says he was beaten mercilessly. The police are also searching for Ms. Parveen’s brothers, who have gone into hiding.
Mr. Fareed also threatened to kidnap and prostitute Ms. Parveen’s younger sister, Naima, a 10th-grader who was ranked first in her class of 40 girls. Panic-stricken, the parents pulled Naima out of school and sent her to relatives far away. So her dreams of becoming a doctor have been dashed. (For readers who want to help, I’ve posted some suggestions on my blog: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)
This nexus of sex trafficking and police corruption is common in developing countries. The problem is typically not so much that laws are inadequate; it is that brothel owners buy the police and the courts.
But Ms. Parveen’s tale arises not only from corruption, but also from poverty.
“If I had money, this wouldn’t be happening,” said Ms. Parveen’s mother, Akbari Begum. “It’s all about money. In the police station, nobody listens to me. The police listen to those who sell narcotics.”
“God should never grant daughters to poor people,” she added. “God should not give sisters to poor brothers. Because we’re poor, we can’t fight for them. It’s very hard for poor people, because they take our daughters and dishonor them. There’s nothing we can do.”
Yet in a land where poor women and girls are victimized equally by pimps and by the police, they do have one savior — Mukhtar Mai. She is the woman I’ve visited and written about often (she also uses the name Mukhtaran Bibi).
After being sentenced to be gang-raped by a tribal council for a supposed offense of her brother, Mukhtar refused to commit suicide and instead prosecuted her attackers. And then she used compensation money (and donations from Times readers) to run schools and an aid organization for Pakistani women.
It was in Mukhtar’s extraordinary sanctuary that I met Ms. Parveen. In my Sunday column, I’ll tell more about Mukhtar today.
You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.
Helping Shakira — Or Volunteering in Pakistan
For readers who want to help Shakira Parveen, the Pakistani woman in Tuesday’s column who was pimped by her husband, the best route would be to send money through Mukhtar Mai and her aid organization. Mukhtar can pass on assistance and in any case is looking after people like Shakira.
Don’t send checks to me. And it’s not worth it to send U.S. checks direct to Mukhtar because the Pakistani banks charge check-clearing fees of nearly $50 each. So the best bet is to send checks to Mukhtar via Mercy Corps, Dept. W, PO Box 2669, Portland, OR 97208-2669, or call 1-888-256-1900. Be sure to write Mukhtar Mai on the subject line of the check, or enclose a note saying it’s for her.
In a broader sense, the way to prevent other tragedies like Shakira’s is to encourage education for girls in Pakistan. One great organization that does that is Developments in Literacy; it now operates 200 schools for girls in Pakistan, www.dil.org.
Girls Learn International is a U.S.-based education that also promotes schools for girls in the developing world, and I recommend it as well.
One final idea. If you’re a university student or otherwise looking for something to do for the summer or for a longer stint, then think about volunteering to work with Mukhtar in her village for a couple of months. They need English teachers for their schools, and frankly the presence of Americans would give a bit of protection to the schools and to Mukhtar herself. Mukhtar would be happy to have Americans; the only restriction is that males would teach males, and females would teach females. And it’s only worth their while if you stay a couple of months or longer.
You would have to cover your cost getting to Pakistan, but once there you would be given food and shelter – and an unforgettable experience. I focus on Shakira in this column, but there are many women with stories just as incredible who have taken sanctuary in Mukhtar’s home. It is heart-wrenching to talk to them – but incredibly inspiring to see Mukhtar giving them new hope. If you want to volunteer, you can email Farhan at mukhtarmaiwwo@googlemail.com.
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