RIGHTS-BANGLADESH: Evicted, Sex Workers Won’t be Thrown

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Qurratul Ain Tahmina

MAGURA, Bangladesh, Jan 6 2003 (IPS) - It seemed they were hunted criminals, not victims of a sweeping eviction now being contested in a Bangladeshi court of law.

Asma, Afia, Arifa and Anila (not their real names) are some of the hundreds of sex workers who were evicted in late December from a brothel in Magura town in south-western Bangladesh, some five hours’ land travel from the capital Dhaka.

”No one will rent me a place,” said Asma, a woman in her mid-twenties, who like many other sex workers could only be contacted with difficulty since many have fled to other brothels in nearby districts. Others still in Magura are trying to evade persecution.

”Last night we could stay with a friend’s family. Tonight we will have to find a new shelter. I’ve scarcely been able to sleep in the past week what with worries of finding a night’s rest and feeding my five-year-old son,” she said in an interview.

The district administrator, Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shafiul Alam, evicted the women on Dec. 25 with the help of the police and military joint force, saying their brothel was largely sitting on government lands.

Today, amid the rubble of some 140 cabins on an area one-third of an acre stands one tiny dilapidated brick structure left out as a proven private property. The claim over the land is still disputed.

Renting out places for prostitution is illegal and the district administration has filed a case against the landlords. The Constitution of Bangladesh says that the state shall take effective measures to stop prostitution.

But a woman gains the right to sell sex by an affidavit in a court of law certifying that she is at least 18 years of age and takes up the profession of her own free will.

Caught in this legal and moral ambivalence, about 4,000 sex workers in over a dozen brothels throughout the country and thousands others based in the streets have become the worst victims of the uncertain and criminalised situation.

Since the eviction in the brothel in Tanbazar near Dhaka in 1999, Magura is the first brothel where the state again resorted to such a summary action.

”Monday evening I was in my room,” recounted Asma, ”when a neighbour rushed in saying that they were announcing through the mike and asking us to leave the brothel by next morning.”

”Wednesday morning they came full force with a bulldozer and the military cordoned off the area,” continued Asma. ”The district commissioner had his own force – men armed with sticks, wearing red headgear. They broke into our rooms, beating us and breaking and throwing out our belongings.”

”My cabin was just beside a pond. My son, along with four women, was pushed into the water. I jumped in to rescue him. As we were rushed out, they hit my face with a stick and I was bleeding,” Asma said, pointing at the scar.

Asma, like many others, could not salvage her meagre belongings.

”They razed the houses in no time,” said Uttam Kumar Sen, whose tea stall is just outside the brothel. ”The deputy commissioner and the magistrate present auctioned the rubble and whatever furniture was left. Most women fled the place empty-handed.”

”Monday evening when they came to announce the eviction, three of us walked up to the district commissioner’s car to remind him he had earlier promised to rehabilitate us first,” Afia added. ”He told us, what rehabilitation? This is government land and you have to go.”

But many stayed on, counting on an earlier court order in their favour.

In April last year, the additional deputy commissioner (revenue) of Magura had issued a notice to individual sex workers ‘requesting’ them to vacate the brothel as they were causing ”social and law and order degradations”.

The notice sought written petitions from the women who wished to be rehabilitated and ended with a warning that those not complying would face the legal consequences of their ‘illegal activities.’

Magura sex workers, inspired by a national network of sex workers formed in June, sought legal action against this notice.

In September 2002, the district court ordered against the eviction of the women or any attempt to disrupt their profession without a proper rehabilitation package, said Shaheena Akhter Daily, the lawyer for the sex workers.

”The court was to lift this injunction only if it were satisfied with the administration’s rehabilitation efforts,” Daily added.

The Magura order held that since prostitution was not an illegal profession, forceful eviction of sex workers was not in compliance with the law. A high court verdict on Tanbazar eviction had been similar.

On Jan. 2, a team of lawyers sent by Sanghati, the Dhaka-based alliance of 84 groups for securing human rights of sex workers, filed a case with the Magura district court against the deputy commissioner and additional deputy commissioner.

The case contends that the officials have violated the September court order and the constitutional rights of the sex workers. Plaintiffs of this case are two of the evicted women. The court asked the officials to respond to the charges by Feb. 28.

The deputy commissioner denied all the allegations to IPS, but refused to elaborate as the case is pending.

”The deputy commissioner committed an inhuman act by throwing these women and children out in the street in this cold weather;” said Ila Chanda, one of the lawyers from Dhaka working with the evicted women.

Chanda added that forces of the administration were still hounding the women. Arifa initially rented a room in town. But she says the deputy commissioner’s men threatened her landlord with arrest, forcing her to go to a brothel in a neighbouring district.

The DC says it had made attempts at rehabilitating the evicted women. But the women say they had only been informally offered the fare or a transport to take them to Daulatdia, a river port where Bangladesh’s largest brothel is situated.

”They said we could practise our illegal trade there,” added Arifa. Daulatdia also has a U.N. Development Programme-funded project for helping sex workers but the women maintain they were not offered any help or shelter.

”Had that been the case,” argued Asma, ”we would we still be wandering, penniless and homeless? I came to Magura brothel 12 years ago because there was no food at home. Now I can no longer feed my son and he had to leave school as his identity became public (after the eviction).”