The Cries of Himalayan Mt Girls

More than 1 million children are trafficked throughout the world each year, and 43 percent are forced into sexual slavery.The biggest difference between prostitution and sex slavery is this: A runaway may survive by prostituting herself on the streets of NYC to escape domestic violence and sexual abuse at home. In Nepal and India girls are physically forced into a building and cannot escape, because they have been literally sold into slavery and forced into this way of life. We have also seen others  abandoned on the streets as young as five years of age only to be picked up by traffickers for slavery simply because girls are in demand. Every day our hearts ache for these girls and we desire to do more!

We are building safe houses for those young girls abandoned to the streets. You can help us by joining our current housing campaign. Go to :  www.youcaring.com/thecriesofhimalayangirls This one ends December 31st, 2013. We actually have not reached our goals so we are continuing the campaign another six months. Thank you so much to those of you who contributed to this campaign!

Nepali Girls Trafficked as Far as Kenya and Tanzania

According to a Nepali Times article September 11,2013 Nepali girls are being taken as far away as Kenya and Tanzania. Once tricked to travel for good jobs they end up being used in bars and clubs etc. It is imperative that teenage girls are assisted in meeting their basic needs so they do not feel compelled to take jobs in far away places putting themselves at risk of being prostituted..

Four Nepali Girls Rescued

Four girls from Nepal were rescued and a woman was arrested,. a senior official said today. The girls were being taken to Sonauli bus station when the SSB, acting on a tip off, reached the spot and rescued them and arrested the woman along with them, said a commander.. During interrogation, the arrested woman revealed that she was supposed to hand over the girls to her accomplice in Mumbai after taking Rs 10,000 for each. The girls have been sent back to Nepal.
Business Standard September 26, 2013

Re-trafficking is Happening! 
A young girl who has been rescued 3 times from a red-light area in India, was  taken by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). They transferred her to a shelter home run by an organization in another city working to protect the rights of marginalised children and women.We thank God that the CWC has ordered that she not be released for one year to anyone claiming custody as  multiple people have tried to get custody of her by claiming to be her parents. Also, if she had been released to her home state there is a strong probability that she would have been re-trafficked.

Child Protection Act Due to High Rate of Crimes Against Children in India
Delhi with 3,635 cases  topped the list of cities where highest number of crime against children was committed in 2012 as per NCRB records. The total crimes committed against children in 2011 was 5,500. The Child Protection Act was recently instituted and started being enforced more..The Act  provides for punishments, ranging from simple to rigorous imprisonment of varying periods, graded as per the gravity of the offence. There is also a provision for fine. The cops have been briefed about the Child Protection Act and asked to be sensitive towards offenses related to children. Sharing his views with TOI, head of the department of Sociology, Allahabad University, Prof A Satyanarayana said, it is the outcome of access to the western mass media in which pornography is easily available and  sows the seed of sick mentality towards others especially the fairer sex. Social values have degraded over the years, he added. A weak legal system is yet another lacuna which adds to the menace, said Prof Narayana. Commenting on the issue, an expert from the Centre of Behavioral and Cognitive Science (CBCS) of AU, Dr Bhoomika R Kar, who has done extensive research on the problems faced by kids, opines that it is not that there is a sudden increase in crime against children but the reality is that such cases are being reported more now as people are coming out and speaking about it. Children have always been a soft target both because at times they are not much aware of the fact that what is happening to them is wrong. If at all they are aware of it, then they are scared to speak about it, said the expert. Right from early childhood, kids should be taught about the sensitive issues and the lawmakers too should enact and follow strict laws to curb this menace and keep the kids safe, she added. The genesis of the problem lies in sick minds that some people grow up to have, said Dr Kar. Source:  The Times of India (published on 13 July, 2013) .

Southeast Asia- US Connection

Washington: An Indian has been sentenced to three years in prison for trafficking women from India into the United States.
Kaushik Jayantibhai Thakkar, 33, along with Brazilian national Fabiano Augusto Amorim, was sentenced  to three years in prison for their roles in smuggling undocumented migrants to the US for private financial gain, the acting assistant US attorney general Mythili Raman said.  Thakkar and Amorim were also sentenced to serve two years of supervised release, as per the order of the US District Judge Ewing Werlein in the southern district of Texas. On December 2, 2012, and January 4, 2013,  Thakkar and Amorim pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to bring undocumented migrants into the US for profit and to one count of unlawfully bringing two undocumented migrants into the United States for profit.	Using a network they transported groups of undocumented migrants from locations within India through South America, Central America and the Caribbean and then into the US by various means, including by air travel, automobiles, water craft and foot, the justice department said. Many of these smuggling events involved illegal entry into the US via the border between the United States and Mexico near McAllen and Laredo, Texas, it added. Source:  The Times of India  (published on 18 May, 2013)

Release of the 2013 TIP (Trafficking in Persons) Report

The U.S. State Dept. has just released the 2013 TIP, Trafficking in Persons Report. You can view it on their website. It is an easy read by country and in the US by state.

NEWS STORY

By Katherine Jones
Special to ASSIST News Service
NEPAL (ANS) --  I would like to highlight the plight of children in the Himalayan Mountains. Children are in crisis in this part of the world. Many are living on the streets due to internal conflict, poverty, corruption, and illiteracy.

Homeless child on the street. There are over 3,000 street children in Kathmandu. (Photo: http://carmensandiegotravel.blogspot.com)

Thousands of children are born into a tribal type of slavery, others are born into brothels in a country other than their own and many more live on the streets. Children are daily seeking food and a safe place to sleep, all the while being subjected to child sex tourism and human trafficking.
Nepal’s slave markets headlines are, “Buy one and get one free!”

In 2010, many Kamiyas families began to experience freedom for the first time. Entire families enslaved are now free! It all began when a US based Indian businessman from New Hampshire began buying families their freedom; 52 to be exact! Now 200,000 Kamiyas are free and of that number the majority are adolescents and teenagers enslaved from birth! Now families are receiving some assistance in beginning new businesses such as farming, teaching, plumbing, and welding etc. Many times it only costs $160-$200 US to buy an entire family!

Homeless street children

Other children are born into a different kind of slavery that of the brothels of Bombay India, where their mothers work in the cages and caves of sex slavery establishments. One million children are trafficked globally. Many children in the Himalayan Mountains have no one to protect them and family members are too poor to feed them. Children are living in squalor with horror and tormented filled days and nights, some serving 20 or more customers per day in the sex trade.
In Nepal over 10,000 girls are trafficked each year. The population in one Himalayan Mountain country is now close to 30 million people. (www.ciafactbook.gov) and Resisting Trafficking in Women: Auditing Testimonies and Restoration Approaches Kathmandu Himalayan Rights Monitors 2003). Over 60% of prostituted women and girls working in Mumbai red light districts—where majority of Nepalese are trafficked, are suspected to be HIV positive. (Sex Slaves Virago Press London 2000) Over 20% of these females are under the age of 16yrs. (www.cwin-nepal.org/pressroomfactsheet/index.htm )

Boys 'enjoying' a meager meal

Many children in Nepal cities live on the capitol city streets; an estimate is close to 1500 boys and girls. It is suspected many more unaccounted for also live on the streets, over several hundred girls under the age of twelve. Street kids are subjected to child sex tourism unless someone cares enough to intervene.
In the Himalayan Mountains many families do not have enough food for everyone in the family to eat daily. A few years ago, a six year old fatherless boy living at home but walking the streets in the daylight hours, begging for food was murdered for a mere $2 US.

Street girls are usually not at high risk for murder but used by tourists and local truckers stopping for a tea break in local shops. Many girls are abandoned with their cousins and brothers on city streets, some only four or five years old. These young innocent ones are greatly at risk of being trafficked across borders far away from their homeland.

A significant number of boys are disabled. Some boys are sold between the ages of 10 and 18 years old to meet the growing demand for traveling bisexual tourists. The disabled boys are considered cursed by their families and friends and many put out of their homes to fend for themselves, They are especially vulnerable to those dealing in sex trade, some are made into eunuchs and sent across the borders into India. (www.ecpat.org/aboutcusec.) For survival many exchange sex for food.

One of many girls needing a safe place

Faces of Hidden Slavery is providing New Beginnings Homes for young children living on city streets, to be nurtured and cared for and receive an education. New Beginnings Homes for Girls will assist girls in two major Himalayan Mountain cities. The home for disabled boys will assist them in receiving an education and a skill to earn a living for themselves.

If you would like to be a part of saving children in the Himalayan Mountains and changing a life you may do so by going to: www.facesofhiddenslavery.org to learn how you can make a difference. Some things you can do:

* Pray for children and local pastors who volunteer to be foster care providers and adopted parents for children. 
* You may also sponsor one of the small foster homes for only three dollars a day! (The price of a Starbucks latte!) Or join with a friend and relative to sponsor a permanent home for 9-10 children with a family atmosphere.

To find out how you can help build and set up “New Beginnings Homes,” and leave a legacy now, go to: www.facesofhiddenslavery.org

---

Katherine Jones is freelance writer specializing in covering South Asia.

---

Since 1999, as a pioneer, Faces of Hidden Slavery has been involved in fighting for the rights of women and mostly girls and seeing  healing and restoration of those coming out of slavery. There are many groups now working on this issue however the funds and human resources are so very limited. In spite of that  progress is being made! Although the issue is vast covering many continents, everyone just needs to stay focused, whether they are in advocacy, rescuing, healing, restoration and rehabilitation.

Stop the exploitation of women and children now!

Events and situations that previously happened only in third world countries are now happening in the United States of America. The trafficking of young women and children that is prevalent in Asian and European countries is now increasing in the US. Why? Global governments are just now beginning to take action in the last ten years to curb the tide of the exploitation of human beings for bonded labor and sex.

Sex trafficking is modern day slavery- to say the least. These slaves produce at least 5 to 7 billion dollars annually. ( New UN Trafficking Protocol, 2002) Trafficking in persons is ranked right up there next to arms and drug trafficking. Human beings have an additional advantage as they can be used over and over again and sold over and over again, increasing the profits of traffickers. For example, In Indian brothels one girl is basically sold to 20- 40 men a day! At any time those same girls can be brought to the United States and sold as a maid or nanny in an American home, or even sold to a US brothel for far more money than she could be sold for in Asia.

Today there are over 12 million women and children in bonded labor, ten million of them in involuntary sex servitude. Traffickers, both men and women, operate through trickery and kidnapping, by promising extremely poor parents and relatives of children an opportunity to work as a nanny or housemaid in a large city in Asia, giving them $200 US, or less, in advance. This is the only money they will receive although they are promised funds monthly. Sadly, this is the last time the parents will see their daughters as they are taken across country borders, never to return.

We've seen villages in the Himalayan mountains where almost every house has a new roof or a black and white television, because of money bought from selling the children or wives to traffickers. The parents and relatives are unaware that their children are taken directly to brothels and tortured until they submit to sex work. Many of these girls are as young as nine years old and some are even as young as three or four years of age! The traffickers sell them to brothel owners and they work ten or fifteen years to pay off a debt of an unknown amount. They are forced to work until they contract STDs, such as HIV/AIDS and die if the brothel owners don’t kill them first. This spring we read in a South Asian newspaper of a young woman in India who brothel owners had tied to a railroad track to be run over by a train because she had contracted AIDS. Fortunately she was rescued just in time.

The traffickers are criminals but they are not prosecuted to the full extent of the law in many countries because they are very evil and dangerous people and their own local governments protect them. Why shouldn’t they ? In some countries, even the police are some of the main customers of the brothels. Government leaders in South Asian countries rape their twelve and thirteen year old housemaids and when they become pregnant they are threatened with death and thrown out to have the baby alone without any medical care. Many of these babies are born blind and with multiple handicaps because of the lack of medical care during pregnancy or at the time of birth to one so young.. Relatives use their nieces and nephews for sex to make extra money. A young girl was being used again and again, forced to have sex with many men by her aunt and uncle. One day a customer complained about the girl and because of the complaint she was held down as they poured boiling water over her naked body. Thank God some Americans, now have this girl in their children’s home in Asia. I am amazed at the number of tiny girls we have seen who have such horrible scars on their faces and bodies as a result of torture.

We must no longer bury our heads in the sand but do something to intervene in this tragedy. We have traveled to and lived in Asian countries especially some of those in the Himalayan mountain areas ( India, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet, China) etc. Many countries are a source for trafficked children and also a trafficking destination. These are also countries where Christians are severely persecuted. Christianity tells mankind to take care of each other and to care for the least of these, many other religions do not instruct in the same manner, so people do the opposite, use each other for personal gain.

Now, getting back to the United States, where the sex trade is feeding the demands of “child sex tourists” from the US and Europe who visit countries like Thailand, Cambodia, India and Nepal, for the purpose of having sex with children, especially those living in the streets who are desperate enough to do anything for food. Many of these tourists also frequent brothels where children are being held against their will and forced to have sex with many customers daily. We have also seen children used as beggars or as soldiers subjected to beatings and rape, living in inhumane conditions.