Sex Trafficking in Asia

Sex Trafficking in Asia
By Dalissa Goodwin 

Source: The New York Times

“There are 2 to 3 million prostitutes in India [...] One 2008 study of Indian brothels found that of Indian and Nepali prostitutes who started as teenagers, about half said they had been coerced into the brothels; women who began working in their twenties were more likely to have made the choice themselves, often to feed their children”(Kristof +WuDunn, 5). Sex trafficking and prostitution is a big deal. There is modern day slavery where women are taken, or tricked, and sold to brothels, or their own family would sell them into prostitution because they need money. Sometimes, even the police are in on the prostitution and are even customers. Police are meant to protect and serve, and in places like India where they monitor terrorist supplies, they don't worry about girls that are being trafficked. This on officer said, "[...] we don't worry about them. There's nothing you can do about them."(Kristof + WuDunn, 23). I have a lot of interest in this topic because I feel that women should be in control of their own bodies and I feel that society has evolved enough to let women choose what they want to do and/or purse in life. Women in prostitution are stolen from themselves and some women don’t choose to go into prostitution and not only are their lives are stolen from them, but they are traumatized and some women get used to that lifestyle. Some people can argue that prostitutes chose to do what they do, but I learned that some women didn't want that life but chose that life to support their families. I also learned that some were kidnapped and trafficked against their will. Not all of the women involved in sex trafficking wanted to live a life they had either been forced to live, or they chose themselves.

In the book, Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, they tell many stories of all of the different things they see and experienced while travelling through places like Cambodia and Nepal. One thing that touched me was that Kristof would help some girls get out of the prostitution game. He bought this one girl, Srey Neth, and took her back to her home to her family. He freed her of that life, he gave her a second chance. Srey Neth was gone for only six weeks but she didn’t tell her family the truth of what happened. Srey Neth told her family she was working. He did that for another woman, Srey Momm, but she ended up going back to the brothel, but it turned out she was addicted to methamphetamines. She was gone for five years but she ran away from home.   

There was this one story about this woman, her name is Meena Hasina. Meena was kidnapped around the age of eight or nine and trafficked. She was sold to a clan and then taken to a house where a brothel owner would keep girls that aren’t mature yet, or haven’t reached puberty. Meena was twelve years old when she was officially taken to the brothel. When Meena had her first “client” she fought so much that the brothel had to give the money back to the man and after that the people who run the brothel beat her and threatened her life. Meena still refused at least four more men after that, but then the brothel got sick of it so they drugged her. One of the brothel owners raped her and after that she gave up and stopped refusing and fighting the customers. “Now I am Wasted,”(Kristof + WuDunn, 4). That’s what she felt after she got raped by the brothel owner. She gave up on fighting back and not letting anyone touch her. This is one of many stories that Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn told in their book Half the Sky.

In Cambodia, there are organizations that can help people. One is the American Assistance for Cambodia and one of the authors, Kristof, contacted them and asked them to look after one of the girls Kristof bought and took her back to her home. I feel that organizations like that should be involved more often than they are because then less women would be taken from their homes and forced into prostitution. If organizations are more involved and get people looking out for girls who are being trafficked and saving them, then they wouldn’t have to worry about prostitutes. People outside of the issue won’t have to worry either because there is a solution to this issue. The solution is to make people more aware of what’s going on and at least attempting to help the women in these situations as much as we can. Kristof is an inspiration for buying women from the brothels and freeing them to their homes. If there were more people in the world like Nicholas D. Kristof, then there wouldn’t be sex trafficking or prostitution.