Walking free
Posing as customers, Peter Stanley and Ben Cooley from the Stop the Traffik campaign visited one of Mumbai’s many brothels. They were in India to learn more about the terrible trade in humans and to find out about the South Asia Centre for Missing and Exploited Persons, (SACMEP), an anti-trafficking initiative of Oasis India.
The red light area is dirty, dark and buzzing with traffic. Girls line the road in saris and overdone makeup. We had heard about ‘the cages of Mumbai,’ but didn’t know what to expect. Rows of open shop-fronts each house a woman in front of a curtain; a meat market where the ladies have no dignity and their meagre earnings are taken by pimps who lurk on every street corner, mobile phones always pressed to their ears.
In the next street, cages give way to run-down multi-story blocks housing hundreds of girls in rooms packed around anonymous stairwells. Our car moves slowly through the crowds of men, hooting to clear a path.
Into the brothel
Eventually we turn into a dark side road, an open sewer running through it. Men urinate at the roadside as dogs forage through piles of rubbish. The pimp ushers us out of the car and tells us to wait until other customers have left. We rehearse our story with the SACMEP operative; we are discriminating customers and unlikely to take any girls tonight but just want to see what is on offer. As we wait in the dark, we become aware of worship songs, as a Church band rehearses in a nearby building.
Our turn comes and we are ushered through steel sliding doors. The doors are shut and bolted behind us. We are shown into another room and another door closes behind us. A TV in the corner shows a chat show and there is very little decoration. We don’t know what to expect. The madam says all the girls are busy, and she has no Indian girls, only white girls. Angelina and Lisa make their entrance.
Dressed in jeans and t-shirts, they stand, backs to the wall wearing expressions of resignation and mild embarrassment. One catches the other’s eye and giggles nervously. We keep up the act of discerning punters, complaining that there are only two to chose from and not what we have been led to expect. As the girls are ushered out, the madam encourages us to visit the next day when she will have a better choice. As we leave, the doors are quickly re-locked and we are left on the dark street.
Rescue and interception
Relieved to be free and able to walk away, we reflect on our experiences. We have witnessed the heartless trade in young women and renewed our determination to do what we can to fight it. We give thanks for the people working at SACMEP, and all they are doing to infiltrate brothels and rescue the girls who wish to leave the trade.
SACMEP also traces missing women and children before they can be sold by traffickers. Many people are trafficked into Mumbai via the city’s railway stations, so one evening we visited a station with some SACMEP operatives. As they merge with the crowds, they try to spot tell-tale signs of trafficking, such as young children who look distressed or are obviously under the control of an adult.
Hordes of people were fighting their way onto already packed trains as huge crowds alighted from the incoming local and long-distance trains, mingling with the dust and the petrol fumes of waiting taxis and rikshaws. We saw some other SACMEP operatives, sitting on a low wall with thee young boys and an older boy. The young ones were clearly frightened while the eldest appeared confident. The SACMEP team saw this as grounds enough to alert the police.
Maybe these three boys were saved from a life of slavery by that simple operation.
More information about anti-human trafficking in India.
More information about Stop the Traffik.
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