Silent slaves

By M L Satyan

Bengaluru, April 19, 2023: Last week an NGO director in Tamil Nadu sent me a news clipping. It said that in just one day three young girls were missing in Ramanathapuram district of the southern Indian state.

The report mentions about the network of human traffickers, including bus drivers and conductors. They identify vulnerable girl students, make them fall in love with them and then sell them to the redlight area in Mumbai.

After receiving this news report, I watched a Tamil movie named Agilan. Agilan is a crane operator, who is also a smuggler at a harbor in Chennai. He works for Paranthaman, who runs a small-time smuggling business. Being ambitious by nature, Agilan strikes a deal with an entrepreneur named Kapoor and is assigned to deport a man who holds confidential secrets of various countries. The film also shows how human trafficking takes place through ships.

On April 18, I met a few NGO friends at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. All of them confirmed that human trafficking, especially young women and girls from rural areas, is happening silently. In most cases the traffickers seem to be family members and relatives of the victims.

During my visit to Jharkhand last month, I learnt that many tribal girls migrate to Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai for jobs mostly through brokers or job-placement agencies. Two years ago, I met a group of tribal girls at Good Shepherd Convent, Mumbai. All of them do domestic work. Many were promised better jobs in shopping malls and medical companies, but were offered only domestic work. They have their own painful stories.

What surprises me is the fact that most common people are unaware of this national and international crime. Even Church-run NGOs do not seem to create awareness among the people. They also fail to initiate preventive measures, including creating job opportunities locally.

Today human trafficking has become a multi-billion-dollar business all over the world. Here are some glimpses of recent human trafficking in India:
• Drug peddlers operating in Ahmedabad have been increasingly using orphan children as drug courier, according to senior police officials (Times of India, April 13, 2023).
• A 17-year-old girl was tortured by her employers in Gurugram. Her elder sister too was brought from her village for domestic work. They have been untraceable for the last several months. The police arrested owners of a Delhi-based placement agency. (NDTV, February 12, 2023).
• A study report prepared by some IPS officers has warned the vulnerabilities of the high-speed 5G telecom network that can provide an excellent platform for middlemen and agents for creating linkages for crimes such as drug trafficking, human and organ trafficking, money laundering and terror financing. (NDTV, January 24, 2023).
• Six minor girls from Assam have been rescued from the clutches of human traffickers in various parts of the country. According to the police the girls were rescued after receiving complaints at many police stations in Karbi Anglong district. (NDTV, January, 22, 2022).

Let us understand human trafficking. It is a recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. Men, women and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims of this crime. The traffickers often use violence or fraudulent employment agencies and fake promises of education and job opportunities to trick and coerce their victims.

This is the third largest organized crime after drugs and the arms trade across the globe. The 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons examines court cases showing that female victims are subject to physical or extreme violence at hands of traffickers at a rate three times higher than males, and children are subjected almost twice as often as adults.

The report also details how war and conflict offer opportunities for traffickers to exploit. It shows that the war in Ukraine is elevating trafficking risks for the displaced population. Most victims resulting from conflicts originate in and are trafficked to countries in Africa and the Middle East. Countries in these regions convict fewer traffickers and detect fewer victims than the rest of the world.

Today, 90 percent of human trafficking in India happens domestically, not across borders. In many cases, traffickers lure children or young adults from rural villages to the city with the promise of well-paid work. Then, victims are transferred to people who, in a real sense, become their slave masters. Some victims work without pay as household maids. Others enter forced marriages with strangers they have never met. Some are forced into bonded labor in the mining or agricultural sectors. Others are sold into brothels.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that sexual exploitation constitutes about half of human trafficking in the South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific Region. Estimates put the number of women in prostitution in India between 2 and 3 million, many of whom are children. These sex-trafficked minors live in squalid conditions in the redlight districts of major cities, servicing multiple clients a day.

The root causes of trafficking are poverty, social or cultural practice and migration. Other causes are the porous nature of borders, corrupt government officials, the involvement of international organised criminal groups or networks and limited capacity of or commitment by immigration and law enforcement officers to control borders. People from economically disadvantaged classes, and belonging to the categories of scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and Other Backward Communities are more susceptible to fall victim to such malpractices.

India’s efforts to protect victims of trafficking remain inadequate in many places. Government authorities do not proactively identify and rescue such unfortunate individuals, hence only few victims receive financial assistance. There is no dearth of the related laws in the country. But there is a problem of inadequate understanding and unfaithful implementation of laws. Social media, used as a new medium for human trafficking is not regulated by India.

A concerted effort must be made by development agencies, non-governmental organizations, human rights and social activists to introduce appropriate preventive measures at various levels. This indeed is a slow, steady and painful process. In course of time these efforts will save the vulnerable victims from becoming silent slaves.