October 25, 2005
Children from Earthquake Sold Into Prostitution
This story is extremely disturbing:
SIX-YEAR-OLD Aisha loves the orange blouse and jeans given to her by the kind woman who rescued her from the chaos of the Kashmir earthquake. She snuggles up to the woman, trying to forget the devastation of her village home and the deaths of her parents 16 days ago.
What Aisha does not know is that the woman, Kausar, is a prostitute who has
bought her from relatives for 50,000 rupees ($1500) and plans to put her to work in the sex trade as soon as she reaches puberty.
Aisha is apparently one of only hundreds of orphaned Pakistani children being targeted by greed-motivated gangs for prostitution.
This is rich:
"I will provide a good education for her. I would not like her to be a cheap, third-class prostitute. I do care about the girl. I will take good care of her, and then reap the benefit. I'm providing for her protection and I don't care what Allah thinks."
Sure, we want her to be an educated prostitute. It wouldn't do at all if she couldn't count how many rupees she needs to turn over to her pimp.
According to the story, this lovely woman wouldn't allow any intervention by journalists. (It's comforting to know they tried. I wonder if they reported it to the authorities? If they did, would the authorities be able to do anything?)
This kind of thing just turns my stomach. Where the heck is UNICEF when you need them? Oh, right, making videos of the Smurfs being annihilated.
*Note: the photo is NOT connected to the story, but is of refugee children after the earthquake. I'm just going for the emphasis thing here.*
h/t: Lucky Dawg News
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