Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-BANGLADESH: Sex Workers Demand Justice Under CEDAW

Tabibul Islam

DHAKA, Feb 4 2000 (IPS) - In a pre-dawn swoop on July 24 last year police rounded up nearly 300 sex workers from the 200-year-old Tanbazar and Nimtoli brothels at gun point and took them to a vagrant home 40-km north of the Bangladesh capital.

Women who resisted the forced uprootment which the authorities said was only to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into mainstream society, were brutally beaten and dragged into waiting buses.

A petition challenging the eviction, saying it violated CEDAW or the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, filed by 50 organisations is pending in the Dhaka High Court.

The process of emptying out the brothels had started much before. Water, electricity and gas supplies were cut off, clients were forcibly stopped from entering and shopkeepers forced to stop selling to the sex workers.

Instead of giving them protection, the police took the side of those behind the ‘mastaans’ or musclemen calling the shots in the neighbourhood. Activists say the Kandupatti brothel in the heart of Dhaka was similarly forcibly closed in 1997 to make way for a shopping complex.

The motive behind both closures was not to “rehabilitate” the sex workers as the authorities said, since only a few have been compensated, activists point out. One hundred and forty nine sex workers from the Narayonganj brothels have been resettled, Social Welfare Minister Dr Mozammel Hossain told Parliament, Jan 13.

The majority of the estimated 7,000 women in the two brothels are scattered, living precariously on the street and soliciting customers in parks and other public places alongside other sex workers who demand a share of the earnings of the new arrivals.

At a press conference last month, angry sex workers said, “We came to the profession after obtaining permission and licence from the authorised government agencies. We paid house rent to the owners, and gas, electricity and water bills to the concerned authorities regularly. Then why were we evicted?”

Recounting her horrifying experience of eviction, Hamida said all her money was taken away by ‘mastaans’ hired by pimps, police and others who thrived on the sex industry.

She tried to find a job in a garment factory but failing went back to prostitution, soliciting clients in the parks and streets of Dhaka. “Police harass me constantly. I never tell them I am from Tanbazar. If I do they will beat me,” she said.

A survey conducted by the Department of Social Welfare confirms that the women were opposed to the rehabilitation plan of the government, which was bankrolled by the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP).

The UNDP which earlier granted 2 million dollars, has expressed concern over the manner in which the two brothels were cleared by the police.

Sathi, a leader, said they had not wanted to leave the Tanbazar and Nimtoli brothels, but were seeking basic services, security of their life and profession, and an end to the constant harassment by police, pimps and ‘mastaans’.

Prostitution was a means of livelihood, to support children and old parents and family members in the village who seldom know what their daughters are doing, she explained.

“It is true that we suffer indignities at every step of life,” she said. Troubled by pimps and those who live off the sex industry during their life time, even death brings no peace. Local customs deny them the satisfaction of a burial, and sex workers must either be cremated or corpses thrown into the river.

A study by Mass Line Media Centre, an independent group, concludes that the two brothels were shut as a result of political rivalry and their real estate value.

They identified Shamim Osman, a ruling Awami League member of Parliament, and his men as having played a vital role in closing the brothels, which were largely controlled by supporters of the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

According to an unidentified BNP leader, the promise of rehabilitation was nothing but bluff, the study says.

Dhaka University anthropologist, Dr H.K.S. Arefin, who sees prostitution as a result of patriarchal social norms and not entirely the result of poverty, said the government was “practicing double standards”.

“The government issues a licence to the prostitutes, provides health services and deploys police around brothels for their protection and at the same time embarks on the drive to oust them,” he said.

According to Zarina Rahman Khan, professor in the Department of Public Administration, Dhaka University, their rehabilitation cannot happen on their will alone. “The entire society and state need to own up their roles and address the core issues such as women’s perceived social role and sexuality.

“Only then can one dream of a society with women free from the oppression of prostitution,” she said.

 
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