WeeklySA_AdminBAIT: A 15-year girl was kept as a sex slave and raped by five to seven men daily for years
By Monk Nkomo
Girls from very poor rural villages are lured into the major cities where they are beaten, drugged, raped and forced into the sex industry in a vicious cycle of the illicit human trafficking business which generates nearly 150 billion US dollars a year.
These are some of the shock findings of the latest study by the University of Notre Dame on the entrepreneurial cycle of human trafficking in India.
The new study also revealed that through coercion and deception, more than 20 million people around the world are forced into labour that generated more than 150 billion dollars in annual profits, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The study examines how human traffickers systematically target girls and women from impoverished villages in India and take them to big cities like Mumbai where they transformed their objections into compliance.
Interviews were conducted amongst nearly thirty former and current workers forced into the sex industry, human traffickers, brothel managers, doctors, non-governmental organizations and police officers in an effort to better understand the cycle and ultimately invoke change.
‘’ Organizing the Exploitation of vulnerable people : A qualitative Assessment of human trafficking’’, has been published in the Journal of Management from Dean Shepherd, the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with Vinit Parida and Joakim Wincent from the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden and Trent Williams from Indiana University respectively.
‘’ At an extreme, modern slavery and human trafficking involve exploitation that a person cannot refuse or escape because of threats, violence, coercion and deception. Despite the illegality, tens of millions of people are victimized by organized traffickers each year with estimates that one in four are children, according to the ILO.
While continuing with his research theme of adversity in entrepreneurship, Shepherd looked into the major cities of India and focused on women entering the sex industry. He established that almost none of them had made a conscious decision to offer the illicit sex service. They were tricked and sold into the industry.
‘’Girls from very poor rural villages are lured into the major cities through deceptive recruiting practices, including bait and switch – sometimes explicitly by family members, or the family turns a blind eye to the fact that it happened. A boy pledges love, promises marriage, and then they run away and she is sold’’.
Shrita, from Nashik in Western India, said she was about 15 years-old when she was befriended by a woman who took her from her village to Mumbai and promised to return her to her family.’’ Instead Shrita was sold to strangers and was raped by five to seven ‘customers’ per day for years.’’
During the interview, Shrita, who is now 42 years-old, said she used to cry a lot and refused to be sexually abused but to no avail. She even tried to commit suicide. The perpetrators used to tell her that nobody would accept her back at her home. She ultimately managed to escape.
The study also revealed that brothel owners forced girls to repay the cost of their initial purchase along with other ‘debts’ including accommodation. Certain police officials were found to be corrupt. They conducted raids but were bribed and paid off by the brothel managers and the girls would be returned to the brothels.
‘’ The girls are beaten, they are drugged, they are raped – all of it is just horrible’’, said Shepherd. They become highly desensitized in the end and brainwashed as well because they are eventually forced to recruit other girls into this vicious cycle.
Shepherd said one of the ways to stop this illegal cycle of exploitation was to help eradicate poverty in India and in other developing economies with high levels of corruption.
‘’That is not an easy task. Eliminate the demand for the sex industry, police corruption and patriarchal societies. They are all massive problems with no easy fixes. But that should not stop us from considering what we might be able to do’’.
This study was released in the wake of a recent report by Standard Chartered Bank in South Africa which found that a significant portion of proceeds amounting to billions of rands generated from human trafficking, passed through legitimate financial service businesses. South Africa was fingered as having reported the highest number of such cases.
Che Sidanius, Global Head of Financial Crime and Industry Affairs at Refinitiv, believes that it was important to leverage the best intelligence available to uncover criminal networks involved in modern -day slavery.
Shephered has made a passionate plea to governments : ‘’ If we can offer girls and women alternatives other than the sex slave industry after having been in that industry before, then they wont have to become recruiters’’.
He hoped that this new study would offer new insights into counter-organizing including NGO interventions like the one which has already started a business making fabrics for former sex workers. It was essential to understand a situation before it could be improved.
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ILLEGAL MINERS JAILED
The Stilfontein Regional Court has sentenced 87 illegal miners to a combined 696 years imprisonment during their appearance before the court of law yesterday.
The 87 illegal miners were arrested on October 20 2021 during a multi-disciplinary operation at Shaft 2 in Orkney led by the Hawks Serious Organized Crime Investigation together with Special Task Force and District Illicit Mining Task Team. The operation followed after months of surveillance after the illegal miners took control of a dormant shaft.
Six illegal miners were fatally wounded and eight injured when a shootout ensued with the police during the operation.
Illegal mining paraphernalia, gold bearing material, two mini buses, eleven firearms (3 shot guns, 4 pistols, 3 rifles and a revolver), about 4000 cartridges of ammunition and bags of food were seized.
All accused who have been in custody since the arrest, pleaded guilty to charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances on 28 March 2023 and they were each sentenced to eight years direct imprisonment. – WSAM Reporter
MEASLES OUTBREAK
CONCERN
South Africa has recorded 40 new laboratory-confirmed measles cases this week, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
According to the NICD, it has tested 5 335 serum samples for measles since the outbreak last year. Of these, 865 samples (16%) were confirmed positive.
Meanwhile, the public health institute said the percentage of samples testing positive (PTP) decreased from 22% of 255 samples tested in the previous week, compared to 14% of 214 samples last week.Sporadic cases were reported in all nine provinces in South Africa in 2022.
However, as of 25 March 2023, measles outbreaks were declared in eight provinces, except for the Eastern Cape.
The outbreak was first declared in Limpopo in October 2022.
In the past week, the NICD said, no new cases were reported in Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, and Western Cape.
“The measles strain detected in Limpopo and the North West is genotype D8, similar to the strain in Zimbabwe in the 2022 outbreak,” the institute said.
In the provinces, the most affected age groups are still the five to nine-year-olds (43%), with a considerable proportion of cases among children aged between one and four (24%) and those aged between 10 and 14 (19%).
The institution said vaccination campaigns should also include children aged 10 to 14.
Published on the 92nd Edition.
