THE JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK
- A documentary on the trade in Nepalese women
ENGLISH SCRIPT
TC: 10:01:00
Music.
TC: 10:01:06
/Kalpana’s voice/
- Once you’re there, you can’t escape.
TC: 10:01:19
/Sumitra on the bus/
- If your mother cries – comfort her and say to her: “Don’t cry”. Try and dry her eyes. Say, “One day I shall come and fetch you.”
TC: 10:01:30
/Male voice – off camera/
- Here a prostitute was murdered very recently. She was strangled.
TC: 10:01:38
/Mina/
- Never go anywhere with a stranger or eat anything they offer you.
TC: 10:01:42
”THE JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK”
TC: 10:01:42
”We want to give our parents happiness..”)/
TC: 10:01:05
Narrator:
Some say that Nepali women have no value. They are mistaken. In fact, they have a precise value. The price of a young Nepali girl is US$ 500.
TC: 10:01:28
/Cleaning corn on cob/
/DC:Chitwan, southern Nepal/
TC: 10:01:40
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta /
-If we had known he was so wicked, we’d never have let him into our home, or blessed him. Before he received our blessing, we thought he was honest - and entrusted our daughter to him. If I met that man today I’d skin him alive.
TC: 10:01:52
Narrator:
The man Sumitra is talking about is a professional trafficker of women. Her daughter Sita fell for his charms and before long they were married. One day when Sumitra went to visit her daughter, the apartment was empty and nobody knew where the newly-wed couple had gone. Sita was sold to a brothel outside the Indian city of Bombay. She was forced to work as a sex slave for two years - before she managed to escape, thanks to an Indian man who fell in love with her.
TC: 10:02:18
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta – off camera /
-I was just fetching water when someone got off the scooter-taxi. “Mother!”, shouted my daughter. I thought we’d never see her again - that she’d fallen victim to some brutal thug.
TC: 10:02:38
Narrator:
But the village did not welcome Sita back as Sumitra and her daughter had hoped. In Nepal a girl who has been a prostitute brings shame upon her whole family. Even upon the entire village. On the very first night, the villagers expressed their condemnation, as hundreds gathered outside the family’s house.
TC: 10:02:59
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
-The villagers wanted to scare her off. They planned to burn our house down. My son was beaten about the face.
TC: 10:03:12
Narrator:
Sita was forced to flee to Katmandu. Her son Prakash, Sumitra’s grandchild, had to stay on the farm without his mother.
But Prakash and his grandmother have made a decision: they will go looking for Sita in the capital and bring her home.
TC: 10:03:23
/Sumitra Bahatta - off camera/
-He yearns for his mother. If he hears a car, he thinks it’s her and calls out, “Mother!”.
TC: 10:03:38
Narrator:
This is the road to hell for between five and seven thousand Nepali girls who are smuggled to the brothels in India every year. From the remote mountain villages of Nepal across the border to the red light districts of India’s major cities.
TC: 10:03:55
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- The stories that we hear from girls who return after a couple of years or months in a brothel are horrible. Generally, these girls do not know why they are there. In many instances they don’t even know where actually they are right now. They don’t know whether this is a city of India or Nepal. They are totally ignorant village girls.
TC: 10:04:25
Narrator:
In a village five hours south of the capital Katmandu we meet Kalpana. She cannot say for sure how old she is, but she believes she is 25. She never went to school, instead she had to work in a carpet factory in Katmandu.
One day, on her way home, there is a landslide and the bus has to stop.
TC: 10:04:49
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- A landslide had caused a traffic jam. I was alone. I didn’t know anyone. The sun was beating down. It was a major landslide. I was really thirsty. I saw a woman there with a child. Two men said: “Sister, the river is dirty. Drink from this bottle.” After drinking a few sips, I blacked out.
TC: 10:05:12
Narrator:
Kalapana was given poisoned water and when she woke up she was in a brothel in Bombay.
TC: 10:05:20
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
-When I got there they said: “You are not alone, little girl, there are several Nepali women here”. I knew no one, and I didn’t speak Hindi. I had no choice. I was forced to stay there.
TC: 10:05:37
Narrator:
Kalpana was around 16 years old when she ended up on this street in central Bombay. There are as many as 100,000 prostitutes here, and almost half of them come from Nepal. Kidnapped or lured over as teenagers, they are condemned to live as sex slaves. Kalpana was kept locked up for more than a year and forced to receive as many as 25 men a day.
TC: 10:06:00
/Name: Kalpana/
-If I refused they would demand their money back. Some bad men actually raped us. They’d complain to the brothel-boss: “You’ve hired useless girls!” Some good men understood we didn’t wish to be raped: “You needn’t sleep with me”. They left us alone.
TC: 10:06:23
Narrator:
Murder and robbery are everyday events in Bombay’s red light district. Filming openly is unthinkable here. So our producer carries a hidden camera, pretending to be a customer looking for young Nepali girls. Before long we have an offer.
TC: 10:06:44
- I know a good place with teenagers… fifteen-year-old girls. It costs you nothing to look.
…Indian and Nepali girls. Chinese girls look after foreigners. Come and see!
TC: 10:07:00
Narrator:
Here we meet the girls who are held as prisoners. They are forced to line up in front of us like animals in a market. They all look like they are in their teens and their eyes are empty. Most of the girls are too psychologically damaged to even think about escaping.
TC: 10:07:29
/Name: Kalpana Aagane
- The customers choose, they know where to find foreign girls. There is a special room where the girls are lined up. When the customer has made his choice of girl, they “warm up”. Then they go to another room to have sex.
TC: 10:08:09
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- The growing sex industry in India is an incentive for trafficking from Nepal. What organised crime and rackets do… For instance if you have some police officers, some bureaucrats and some politicians in your favour, you can sell as many girls as you like.
TC: 10:08:28
/Yubaraj with book/
Narrator:
Yubaraj Sangroula is the head of Katmandu Law School and he has written a book about the trafficking of Nepali women to India. The reason Nepali women are particularly vulnerable has to do with their low status in society. Nepal is governed by rural traditions, where men are valued higher than women. The lowest status is that of young, unmarried girls.
TC: 10:08:50
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- A defective value system is the root cause of trafficking. Women’s personality is always defined in terms of sex and marital status. A girl is born in the family – she is not a member of the family. When she gets married she becomes a member of the husband’s family. The outlook of society is that women are there to continue the ancestral lines of the husband.
TC: 10:09:03
- Sister, where are you going?
- Surket
- Where did you come from?
- Bardiya
TC: 10:09:28
/Name: Tilkala Bhattori, social worker/
- I looked around and I didn’t find any girl that’s being sold.
TC: 10:09:36
Narrator:
In Southwest Nepal on the border to India lies Nepalgunj. This is the last chance to stop the girls from being lured into the sex-industry across the border. At this bus stop social workers are giving information on aids, while they look out for girls travelling with smugglers.
TC: 10:09:54
/Name: Tilkala Bhattori, social worker/
- Many of them say they are travelling with a brother or sister or relative – and it’s hard to know if they’re telling the truth.
TC: 10:10:06
Narrator:
Every day in Nepalgunj 150 trucks, 300 horse-drawn carts and more bicycles than anyone has ever bothered counting cross the border into India. Here too social workers and border police keep an eye out for traffickers. Suddenly, they spot an old man with a young girl in a rickshaw.
The girl hesitates before answering questions from the social worker. And the man refuses to co-operate.
The girl is taken in for questioning, while the man keeps watch outside.
TC: 10:10:45
/Name: Bagawati Sharma, social worker/
- She said they were from Melkuna in the hills. They refused to get off the rickshaw. So I was suspicious. She said she was married, but she had no wedding line drawn on her head.
- I heard the pimp say “Watch what you say!”. She kept silent, just smiled.
TC: 10:11:02
Narrator:
This suspected trafficker is forced to turn back at the border. But there is not enough evidence to arrest him. The girl at his side is most likely unaware of the dangers luring in the big cities of India. Her future is uncertain. The border to is long and the smugglers have many ways out of the country.
TC: 10:12:15
TC: 10:12:24
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
- We have no idea what our daughter’s doing. Maybe tailoring or sewing. I don’t know whether she’s working…or crying. She may even be ill.
TC: 10:12:48
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula – off camera/
- We have created a society where girls are very vulnerable. We feel like investing in a girl is like watering the neighbour’s flower plant... So we don’t invest in girls’ education, we don’t invest in girls’ development. We see sons as the future, but we see girls as a useless member of the family. So there is definitely no investment and they are definitely ignorant.
TC: 10:13:29
- Dipu, say what number!
- Tell us!
- Look, a x b = ?
- Is it a x b = ab?
- Yes, a x b = ab.
TC: 10:13:39
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 years/
- If I hadn’t gone to school, I’d have been a peasant woman doing housework. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn - and I’d never have known anything about the trafficking of women.
TC: 10:13:58
Narrator:
Mina is very lucky to be attending school. In Nepal only one in four women can read. Mina is in the eighth grade and she lives not far from the border to India. Like so many other villages, hers too has been targeted by traffickers.
TC: 10:14:16
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- Her name is Bimala Khatri. She lived over there. An old woman promised her beautiful bracelets if she accompanied her to Nepalgunj, then said: “Never mind Nepalgunj… you’ll get even more beautiful bracelets in Rupati.” You’ll even be able to see what a train looks like.” They gave her a potion. She fell unconscious and was sold in Bombay.
TC: 10:14:45
Narrator:
Although Mina is afraid of being abducted herself, she is not quite sure what happens to the Nepali girls in India.
TC: 10:14:54
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- Some work as au pères… or they make money out of us. Others are mistresses... selling. Maybe concubines. I don’t know what happens to them.
TC: 10:15:06
Narrator:
Mina and her friends live in constant fear of meeting the human smugglers. They have learnt to be careful.
TC: 10:15:15
/Name: Mina, 13 yrs/
- Never eat anything that a stranger offers you. Refuse, if they try to lure you to go to the bazaar with them. Don’t go! Try and see through them and see what they’re really up to.
TC: 10:15:42
Narrator:
Rescue Foundation, in Bombay, is an organisation so hated by the traffickers that its members work under constant death-threats. Balkrishna Acharya has built an extensive intelligence service and via its network of informers he is gets tip-offs about the trafficking of under age girls. But getting the traffickers behind bars is a hard and ungrateful task.
TC: 10:16:03
/Name: Balkrishna Acharya, president
Maiti Nepal/Rescue Foundation/
- This man is involved in two trafficking cases. First we catch him – I think it was 1 ½ years
ago. With our bad legal system he was released, within three months they made a big company and again he was caught trafficking some girl.
TC: 10:16:27
Narrator:
Rescue Foundation also has a number of informers working under cover in Bombay’s red light district. Based on their information the team raids brothels suspected of housing under age girls.
TC: 10:16:42
/Name: Balkrishna Acharya, president
Maiti Nepal/Rescue Foundation/
- All brothels maintain one hidden cell. When the police come on a raid and they know there is something wrong. Then the managers put the newcomers by force in the cell. .. This is a false ceiling and… actually, this a door and I try to push it with my back.
- One by one… You look – what is the age of this girl?
- Eight are surely minors, but only four were declared minors. That girl I assure you… They are declared majors due to manipulation and bribes.
- Very young – not more than thirteen, fourteen year old girls.
- From a total of fourteen, I think six-seven are Nepali, the others are Indian, maybe from Bangladesh.
TC: 10:18:28
Narrator:
We are allowed to follow one of Rescue Foundation’s secret agents into the red light district. He takes us to a brothel where a visit costs less than US$1. Here half of the girls are HIV-positive and up to 90 per cent suffer from tuberculosis.
TC: 10:19:00
/The Agent – face covered, anonymous/
- In there! This is the place where the prostitutes take the customers and do the sex thing.
- This is the place where a prostitute was murdered very recently. A 22-23 year old commercial sex worker, she was murdered. She was strangled by her neck and she was pierced in her private parts.
TC: 10:19:36
Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- Of course we were homesick, but what could we do? I had a high temperature for a month. Nobody could get us out of there. All newcomers were kept locked up. Even after one or two years we were constantly under guard.
TC: 10:20:05
/Name: Rana Bahadur Kumal, father/
- Suddenly a letter came saying she was in Bombay. On the basis of that I went to Bombay - and found the guy who’d sent me the letter. I asked if my daughter could be got out of there, but he wanted money. He demanded 16,000 rupees. But I didn’t have it - so I stayed there for a week, and then came home.
- I felt terrible, not having seen my daughter. I cried when I got home.
TC: 10:20:42
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- What could we do if we did escape? We tried to once. But, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t. The police won’t help you. They’re all involved. They’re all corrupt.
TC: 10:20:59
Narrator:
It would take another three years before father and daughter were finally reunited. After four years,, Kalpana was rescued in a raid. Although some of the villagers still talk behind her back, her family and friends have accepted her back into their lives.
TC: 10:21:13
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- You can’t change the past. You have to look ahead and start afresh. Why look back? Thinking of the past makes my head ache, and I feel feverish. One shouldn’t dwell on things. I spend time with my friends, and that helps me forget my sadness.
TC: 10:21:42
/Sumitra Bahatta – off camera/
- He’s looking forward to seeing his mother. He says, “One day when I’m rich, I’ll buy some land and build a house - so I can live there and take care of my mother”.
TC: 10:21:59
Narrator:
Sumitra believes her daughter is in a rehabilitation centre for former prostitutes. All she has with her to Katmandu is a phone number.
TC: 10:22:08
/Sumitra on the phone/
- Hallo.
- This is Sita’s mother.
- What Sita ?
- Sita from Chitwan.
- How long has she been ill?
TC: 10:22:43
Narrator:
After waiting for hours while Sita is examined by doctors, Sumitra and Prakash are finally allowed a short visit to her sick-bed. Afterwards they are relieved. It turns out Sita is suffering from kidney- stones, a painful but treatable condition.
TC: 10:23:00
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
-I feel calmer now. I hope they can operate and get rid of her stones. I hope she will survive. The girl’s only twenty, and I was so afraid she’d die.
TC: 10:23:15
/Sumitra and Prakash get on the bus/
Narrator:
But their joy at finding Sita alive is overshadowed by their grief that the family remains divided. Sita is too ill to dare go back to the village again.
TC: 10:23:28
/Sumitra – off camera/
- I’m so sad... devastated. I wish she were well, and that I could have brought her home.
TC: 10:23:45
Narrator:
Mina is thirteen years old, the preferred age for the traffickers. Old enough to work in a brothel, young enough to be lured away. And even if Mina is careful, she still lives in constant fear of what could happen if she is abducted.
TC: 10:24:02
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- If I were sold, I would be sold to a foreign country. I’d feel very, very lost. I wouldn’t be able to find my way home… and perhaps, in a foreign country, someone would kill me.
TC: 10:24:35
/CREDITS/
Producer: Fredrik Lundberg
Camera/Editing: Andreas Rydbacken
Narration: Natasha Brieger
Rescue footage courtesy of
Maiti Nepal (Mumbai)
In cooperation with:
Plan Norway
Plan Sweden
World Childhood Foundation
UNICEF, Sweden
ECPAT
Executive Producer: Malcolm Dixelius
A
DIXIT INTERNATIONAL
Production
Copyright: 2001
- A documentary on the trade in Nepalese women
ENGLISH SCRIPT
TC: 10:01:00
Music.
TC: 10:01:06
/Kalpana’s voice/
- Once you’re there, you can’t escape.
TC: 10:01:19
/Sumitra on the bus/
- If your mother cries – comfort her and say to her: “Don’t cry”. Try and dry her eyes. Say, “One day I shall come and fetch you.”
TC: 10:01:30
/Male voice – off camera/
- Here a prostitute was murdered very recently. She was strangled.
TC: 10:01:38
/Mina/
- Never go anywhere with a stranger or eat anything they offer you.
TC: 10:01:42
”THE JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK”
TC: 10:01:42
”We want to give our parents happiness..”)/
TC: 10:01:05
Narrator:
Some say that Nepali women have no value. They are mistaken. In fact, they have a precise value. The price of a young Nepali girl is US$ 500.
TC: 10:01:28
/Cleaning corn on cob/
/DC:Chitwan, southern Nepal/
TC: 10:01:40
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta /
-If we had known he was so wicked, we’d never have let him into our home, or blessed him. Before he received our blessing, we thought he was honest - and entrusted our daughter to him. If I met that man today I’d skin him alive.
TC: 10:01:52
Narrator:
The man Sumitra is talking about is a professional trafficker of women. Her daughter Sita fell for his charms and before long they were married. One day when Sumitra went to visit her daughter, the apartment was empty and nobody knew where the newly-wed couple had gone. Sita was sold to a brothel outside the Indian city of Bombay. She was forced to work as a sex slave for two years - before she managed to escape, thanks to an Indian man who fell in love with her.
TC: 10:02:18
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta – off camera /
-I was just fetching water when someone got off the scooter-taxi. “Mother!”, shouted my daughter. I thought we’d never see her again - that she’d fallen victim to some brutal thug.
TC: 10:02:38
Narrator:
But the village did not welcome Sita back as Sumitra and her daughter had hoped. In Nepal a girl who has been a prostitute brings shame upon her whole family. Even upon the entire village. On the very first night, the villagers expressed their condemnation, as hundreds gathered outside the family’s house.
TC: 10:02:59
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
-The villagers wanted to scare her off. They planned to burn our house down. My son was beaten about the face.
TC: 10:03:12
Narrator:
Sita was forced to flee to Katmandu. Her son Prakash, Sumitra’s grandchild, had to stay on the farm without his mother.
But Prakash and his grandmother have made a decision: they will go looking for Sita in the capital and bring her home.
TC: 10:03:23
/Sumitra Bahatta - off camera/
-He yearns for his mother. If he hears a car, he thinks it’s her and calls out, “Mother!”.
TC: 10:03:38
Narrator:
This is the road to hell for between five and seven thousand Nepali girls who are smuggled to the brothels in India every year. From the remote mountain villages of Nepal across the border to the red light districts of India’s major cities.
TC: 10:03:55
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- The stories that we hear from girls who return after a couple of years or months in a brothel are horrible. Generally, these girls do not know why they are there. In many instances they don’t even know where actually they are right now. They don’t know whether this is a city of India or Nepal. They are totally ignorant village girls.
TC: 10:04:25
Narrator:
In a village five hours south of the capital Katmandu we meet Kalpana. She cannot say for sure how old she is, but she believes she is 25. She never went to school, instead she had to work in a carpet factory in Katmandu.
One day, on her way home, there is a landslide and the bus has to stop.
TC: 10:04:49
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- A landslide had caused a traffic jam. I was alone. I didn’t know anyone. The sun was beating down. It was a major landslide. I was really thirsty. I saw a woman there with a child. Two men said: “Sister, the river is dirty. Drink from this bottle.” After drinking a few sips, I blacked out.
TC: 10:05:12
Narrator:
Kalapana was given poisoned water and when she woke up she was in a brothel in Bombay.
TC: 10:05:20
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
-When I got there they said: “You are not alone, little girl, there are several Nepali women here”. I knew no one, and I didn’t speak Hindi. I had no choice. I was forced to stay there.
TC: 10:05:37
Narrator:
Kalpana was around 16 years old when she ended up on this street in central Bombay. There are as many as 100,000 prostitutes here, and almost half of them come from Nepal. Kidnapped or lured over as teenagers, they are condemned to live as sex slaves. Kalpana was kept locked up for more than a year and forced to receive as many as 25 men a day.
TC: 10:06:00
/Name: Kalpana/
-If I refused they would demand their money back. Some bad men actually raped us. They’d complain to the brothel-boss: “You’ve hired useless girls!” Some good men understood we didn’t wish to be raped: “You needn’t sleep with me”. They left us alone.
TC: 10:06:23
Narrator:
Murder and robbery are everyday events in Bombay’s red light district. Filming openly is unthinkable here. So our producer carries a hidden camera, pretending to be a customer looking for young Nepali girls. Before long we have an offer.
TC: 10:06:44
- I know a good place with teenagers… fifteen-year-old girls. It costs you nothing to look.
…Indian and Nepali girls. Chinese girls look after foreigners. Come and see!
TC: 10:07:00
Narrator:
Here we meet the girls who are held as prisoners. They are forced to line up in front of us like animals in a market. They all look like they are in their teens and their eyes are empty. Most of the girls are too psychologically damaged to even think about escaping.
TC: 10:07:29
/Name: Kalpana Aagane
- The customers choose, they know where to find foreign girls. There is a special room where the girls are lined up. When the customer has made his choice of girl, they “warm up”. Then they go to another room to have sex.
TC: 10:08:09
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- The growing sex industry in India is an incentive for trafficking from Nepal. What organised crime and rackets do… For instance if you have some police officers, some bureaucrats and some politicians in your favour, you can sell as many girls as you like.
TC: 10:08:28
/Yubaraj with book/
Narrator:
Yubaraj Sangroula is the head of Katmandu Law School and he has written a book about the trafficking of Nepali women to India. The reason Nepali women are particularly vulnerable has to do with their low status in society. Nepal is governed by rural traditions, where men are valued higher than women. The lowest status is that of young, unmarried girls.
TC: 10:08:50
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula, lawyer/
- A defective value system is the root cause of trafficking. Women’s personality is always defined in terms of sex and marital status. A girl is born in the family – she is not a member of the family. When she gets married she becomes a member of the husband’s family. The outlook of society is that women are there to continue the ancestral lines of the husband.
TC: 10:09:03
- Sister, where are you going?
- Surket
- Where did you come from?
- Bardiya
TC: 10:09:28
/Name: Tilkala Bhattori, social worker/
- I looked around and I didn’t find any girl that’s being sold.
TC: 10:09:36
Narrator:
In Southwest Nepal on the border to India lies Nepalgunj. This is the last chance to stop the girls from being lured into the sex-industry across the border. At this bus stop social workers are giving information on aids, while they look out for girls travelling with smugglers.
TC: 10:09:54
/Name: Tilkala Bhattori, social worker/
- Many of them say they are travelling with a brother or sister or relative – and it’s hard to know if they’re telling the truth.
TC: 10:10:06
Narrator:
Every day in Nepalgunj 150 trucks, 300 horse-drawn carts and more bicycles than anyone has ever bothered counting cross the border into India. Here too social workers and border police keep an eye out for traffickers. Suddenly, they spot an old man with a young girl in a rickshaw.
The girl hesitates before answering questions from the social worker. And the man refuses to co-operate.
The girl is taken in for questioning, while the man keeps watch outside.
TC: 10:10:45
/Name: Bagawati Sharma, social worker/
- She said they were from Melkuna in the hills. They refused to get off the rickshaw. So I was suspicious. She said she was married, but she had no wedding line drawn on her head.
- I heard the pimp say “Watch what you say!”. She kept silent, just smiled.
TC: 10:11:02
Narrator:
This suspected trafficker is forced to turn back at the border. But there is not enough evidence to arrest him. The girl at his side is most likely unaware of the dangers luring in the big cities of India. Her future is uncertain. The border to is long and the smugglers have many ways out of the country.
TC: 10:12:15
TC: 10:12:24
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
- We have no idea what our daughter’s doing. Maybe tailoring or sewing. I don’t know whether she’s working…or crying. She may even be ill.
TC: 10:12:48
/Name: Yubaraj Sangroula – off camera/
- We have created a society where girls are very vulnerable. We feel like investing in a girl is like watering the neighbour’s flower plant... So we don’t invest in girls’ education, we don’t invest in girls’ development. We see sons as the future, but we see girls as a useless member of the family. So there is definitely no investment and they are definitely ignorant.
TC: 10:13:29
- Dipu, say what number!
- Tell us!
- Look, a x b = ?
- Is it a x b = ab?
- Yes, a x b = ab.
TC: 10:13:39
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 years/
- If I hadn’t gone to school, I’d have been a peasant woman doing housework. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn - and I’d never have known anything about the trafficking of women.
TC: 10:13:58
Narrator:
Mina is very lucky to be attending school. In Nepal only one in four women can read. Mina is in the eighth grade and she lives not far from the border to India. Like so many other villages, hers too has been targeted by traffickers.
TC: 10:14:16
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- Her name is Bimala Khatri. She lived over there. An old woman promised her beautiful bracelets if she accompanied her to Nepalgunj, then said: “Never mind Nepalgunj… you’ll get even more beautiful bracelets in Rupati.” You’ll even be able to see what a train looks like.” They gave her a potion. She fell unconscious and was sold in Bombay.
TC: 10:14:45
Narrator:
Although Mina is afraid of being abducted herself, she is not quite sure what happens to the Nepali girls in India.
TC: 10:14:54
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- Some work as au pères… or they make money out of us. Others are mistresses... selling. Maybe concubines. I don’t know what happens to them.
TC: 10:15:06
Narrator:
Mina and her friends live in constant fear of meeting the human smugglers. They have learnt to be careful.
TC: 10:15:15
/Name: Mina, 13 yrs/
- Never eat anything that a stranger offers you. Refuse, if they try to lure you to go to the bazaar with them. Don’t go! Try and see through them and see what they’re really up to.
TC: 10:15:42
Narrator:
Rescue Foundation, in Bombay, is an organisation so hated by the traffickers that its members work under constant death-threats. Balkrishna Acharya has built an extensive intelligence service and via its network of informers he is gets tip-offs about the trafficking of under age girls. But getting the traffickers behind bars is a hard and ungrateful task.
TC: 10:16:03
/Name: Balkrishna Acharya, president
Maiti Nepal/Rescue Foundation/
- This man is involved in two trafficking cases. First we catch him – I think it was 1 ½ years
ago. With our bad legal system he was released, within three months they made a big company and again he was caught trafficking some girl.
TC: 10:16:27
Narrator:
Rescue Foundation also has a number of informers working under cover in Bombay’s red light district. Based on their information the team raids brothels suspected of housing under age girls.
TC: 10:16:42
/Name: Balkrishna Acharya, president
Maiti Nepal/Rescue Foundation/
- All brothels maintain one hidden cell. When the police come on a raid and they know there is something wrong. Then the managers put the newcomers by force in the cell. .. This is a false ceiling and… actually, this a door and I try to push it with my back.
- One by one… You look – what is the age of this girl?
- Eight are surely minors, but only four were declared minors. That girl I assure you… They are declared majors due to manipulation and bribes.
- Very young – not more than thirteen, fourteen year old girls.
- From a total of fourteen, I think six-seven are Nepali, the others are Indian, maybe from Bangladesh.
TC: 10:18:28
Narrator:
We are allowed to follow one of Rescue Foundation’s secret agents into the red light district. He takes us to a brothel where a visit costs less than US$1. Here half of the girls are HIV-positive and up to 90 per cent suffer from tuberculosis.
TC: 10:19:00
/The Agent – face covered, anonymous/
- In there! This is the place where the prostitutes take the customers and do the sex thing.
- This is the place where a prostitute was murdered very recently. A 22-23 year old commercial sex worker, she was murdered. She was strangled by her neck and she was pierced in her private parts.
TC: 10:19:36
Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- Of course we were homesick, but what could we do? I had a high temperature for a month. Nobody could get us out of there. All newcomers were kept locked up. Even after one or two years we were constantly under guard.
TC: 10:20:05
/Name: Rana Bahadur Kumal, father/
- Suddenly a letter came saying she was in Bombay. On the basis of that I went to Bombay - and found the guy who’d sent me the letter. I asked if my daughter could be got out of there, but he wanted money. He demanded 16,000 rupees. But I didn’t have it - so I stayed there for a week, and then came home.
- I felt terrible, not having seen my daughter. I cried when I got home.
TC: 10:20:42
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- What could we do if we did escape? We tried to once. But, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t. The police won’t help you. They’re all involved. They’re all corrupt.
TC: 10:20:59
Narrator:
It would take another three years before father and daughter were finally reunited. After four years,, Kalpana was rescued in a raid. Although some of the villagers still talk behind her back, her family and friends have accepted her back into their lives.
TC: 10:21:13
/Name: Kalpana Aagane/
- You can’t change the past. You have to look ahead and start afresh. Why look back? Thinking of the past makes my head ache, and I feel feverish. One shouldn’t dwell on things. I spend time with my friends, and that helps me forget my sadness.
TC: 10:21:42
/Sumitra Bahatta – off camera/
- He’s looking forward to seeing his mother. He says, “One day when I’m rich, I’ll buy some land and build a house - so I can live there and take care of my mother”.
TC: 10:21:59
Narrator:
Sumitra believes her daughter is in a rehabilitation centre for former prostitutes. All she has with her to Katmandu is a phone number.
TC: 10:22:08
/Sumitra on the phone/
- Hallo.
- This is Sita’s mother.
- What Sita ?
- Sita from Chitwan.
- How long has she been ill?
TC: 10:22:43
Narrator:
After waiting for hours while Sita is examined by doctors, Sumitra and Prakash are finally allowed a short visit to her sick-bed. Afterwards they are relieved. It turns out Sita is suffering from kidney- stones, a painful but treatable condition.
TC: 10:23:00
/Name: Sumitra Bahatta/
-I feel calmer now. I hope they can operate and get rid of her stones. I hope she will survive. The girl’s only twenty, and I was so afraid she’d die.
TC: 10:23:15
/Sumitra and Prakash get on the bus/
Narrator:
But their joy at finding Sita alive is overshadowed by their grief that the family remains divided. Sita is too ill to dare go back to the village again.
TC: 10:23:28
/Sumitra – off camera/
- I’m so sad... devastated. I wish she were well, and that I could have brought her home.
TC: 10:23:45
Narrator:
Mina is thirteen years old, the preferred age for the traffickers. Old enough to work in a brothel, young enough to be lured away. And even if Mina is careful, she still lives in constant fear of what could happen if she is abducted.
TC: 10:24:02
/Name: Mina Kumari Budhathoki, 13 yrs/
- If I were sold, I would be sold to a foreign country. I’d feel very, very lost. I wouldn’t be able to find my way home… and perhaps, in a foreign country, someone would kill me.
TC: 10:24:35
/CREDITS/
Producer: Fredrik Lundberg
Camera/Editing: Andreas Rydbacken
Narration: Natasha Brieger
Rescue footage courtesy of
Maiti Nepal (Mumbai)
In cooperation with:
Plan Norway
Plan Sweden
World Childhood Foundation
UNICEF, Sweden
ECPAT
Executive Producer: Malcolm Dixelius
A
DIXIT INTERNATIONAL
Production
Copyright: 2001