Kandapara prostitute village

 

Kandapara prostitute village

When the old man Lavani accompanied Agudumba to visit the countryside of Bangladesh, he said: In Bangladesh, where sex trade is legalized, there is a village called Kandapara in the Tangail region. This small village is the oldest in Bangladesh. , the largest brothel. It has been in existence for nearly two hundred years, so it is also known as the "hundred-year brothel" and "female hell".

Old Lavani said:

The village of Kandapara is not that big. There are more than 600 houses, but 900-1,200 prostitutes live there. The backward infrastructure severely limits the development of the "industry".

Even with such a large number of practitioners, outsiders still suspect that the number of prostitutes is greatly underestimated, because there are still a large number of young girls engaged in this industry in the village. Young girls are often hidden for fear of being targeted by the police.

In addition to women, there are also many men living in the village. They are the husbands, fathers, sons and brothers of prostitutes. The crowding in the village is beyond imagination.

The villagers' income mainly relies on sex trade, so the madam is the person with the highest status here. In this country where women have low status, the men in the village also have to take orders from women.

With more people and less land, competition is high, and prostitutes are also entangled in each other, resulting in a very harsh working environment. There may be only a partition between two simultaneous transactions, and hygiene is impossible to talk about.

In order to make more money, on the one hand, the madams are trying to increase the number of employees; on the other hand, they are exploiting girls in every possible way. They are deceived or forced to pick up customers before they are underage.

Not all prostitutes are locals, and there are not that many girls in the world who are willing to sell their bodies.

Most of them were abducted by human traffickers.

The economic development of Bangladesh is relatively backward. Human traffickers often go into poor families to lure parents to sell their children. Some deceive the children in the name of job introduction, some take the children away in the name of marriage, or they just buy and sell them without concealment. .

Due to historical and religious reasons, many refugees have emerged near the border between Bangladesh, Myanmar and India, and refugee settlements have also become places where human traffickers develop markets.

Compared with locals, refugees at the border are more difficult to receive legal protection, and thus become a source of prostitutes that cannot be ignored.

Underage girls are very popular with traffickers, not only because they are young and easy to control, but they may also be very popular with the madams. Due to the strong crackdown on child pornography in Europe and the United States, perverts in Europe and the United States have gone to South and Southeast Asia for consumption. Compared with local people, these perverts belong to the wealthy category, thus creating a huge prostitution market for young girls. However, the sanitary conditions in Kandapara Village are relatively poor, so I don’t know how the perverts managed to do it.

Agudumba asked the old man Lavani: Don’t the police crack down on prostitution?

Old Lavani said:

No crackdown, prostitution is legal in Bangladesh. Don't the police crack down on child prostitution? This certainly hits, but not very effectively.

Because traffickers, madams, and even the parents of children take the initiative to bribe officials, all parties jointly issue an affidavit of voluntary employment and declare that they are over 18 years old. The police turned a blind eye, and the police could also earn gray income by issuing business licenses.

For the madams, the significance of youth and young girls is not only more popular in the market. Being young means greater fertility. Girls may not use contraceptives when "working". While making money, they also get the seeds of life from their clients. After giving birth to a child, the boy will become a coolie, bodyguard and pimp in the village, while the girl will join the army of prostitutes to earn more income for the madam. In this way, once a girl falls into the cave of prostitution, she will suffer here for generations. When more girls are deceived, a prostitution-based village develops.

As the industry continues from generation to generation, people's ideas have also changed. In Kandapara Village, mothers will push their daughters into the fire pit with their own hands, and mothers, daughters, and sisters will do business together. Not only are men not ashamed of what happened to women in their families, but they also rely on women's bodies for living expenses.

The United Nations Children's Fund released a statistical report in 2004 that more than 10,000 underage girls were being "sexually exploited" in Bangladesh. Now more than a decade later, the situation may be even worse.

Agudemba asked old man Lavani: Didn’t the girls who were prostitutes in Kandapara Village ever think about escaping?

Old Lavani replied: If you want to break free from the shackles, you have to talk about the methods used by the madams to control girls. Rumor has it that if you work in the profession of prostitution for a long time, it will be difficult to stay good. There are many reasons, but the problem of working for too long is not a problem for girls in Kandapara village because they also face two other problems.

Most prostitutes enter the industry at a young age, and the madams try every means to make the girls incur huge debts from an early age by raising them, borrowing money, etc. If the debts are not paid, the girls are not allowed to leave, and they are not even allowed to keep any money privately. Girls devote their childhood to the madam, but when they pay off their debts, they find that they have grown up. Can they escape their fate and become good people smoothly? also can not.

Girls who have been engaged in prostitution since they were teenagers will have many unspeakable occupational diseases on their immature bodies. The infrastructure in Kandapara Village is too poor and the poor working environment can easily make girls suffer from diseases. Unfortunately, there is no work-related injury insurance or medical insurance in this industry, so you have to pay for medical treatment yourself.

Girls who have lived in prostitution dens throughout their childhood have never gone to school and have little knowledge. They have no other survival skills except selling their bodies. It is a problem to support themselves, let alone have money to see a doctor.

At this time, even if the girls want to escape from Kandapara Village, they may eventually have to return due to financial pressure; those who can withstand the pressure of survival for a while will have to endure discrimination that they have never experienced before.

Madams pay great attention to training prostitutes from an early age. Girls will follow older prostitutes to pick up clients when they are 9 or 10 years old, and start working in the industry when they are 12 or 13 years old. Without access to external information, the outlook on life has become distorted due to the influence of what we hear and see. Girls lack shame and regard this industry as a legitimate profession. Most girls who leave the village will return to their old profession due to the pressure of life.

Occupations and concepts are incompatible with society, and girls may not be able to bear the discrimination. Without the bondage of debt, most girls will continue to stay in the village to do business. At most, they will break away from the original madam and start their own business. They will do what the old madam did to them again to other girls, and the victims will become the perpetrators. .

Old Lavani continued:

Compared with debt control, the madams’ more powerful method is drug control. In response to impartial police inspections, madams would give underage girls drugs containing large amounts of steroid hormones, causing them to gain weight and look older. The drug is cheap and sells for less than 1 yuan, which has led to widespread abuse of the drug. But what many people don’t know is that these drugs were not designed to be taken by humans at all, but as fattening drugs for livestock.

The madam relied on drugs to cope with the police inspection as she wished, but left the girls with serious pain. People can easily become addicted after taking these drugs, and once a person is addicted, they can easily be controlled through drugs. The consequence of taking medication for a long time is that the immune system is weakened and people are prone to diabetes, high blood pressure, skin rashes and headaches. Moreover, anabolic steroids are also carcinogens, and those who take them face a higher risk of cancer.

Some little girls will resist taking medicine, but young girls will face punishments of beatings, starvation, and forced submission, and may even develop Stockholm Syndrome.

It is useless to call the police. The prostitute village has been able to exist for so many years. Many police and officials have accepted bribes from the madams, and they are often frequent visitors to the prostitute village. Despite the dangers, some thin prostitutes take the drug on their own initiative because a plumper figure might attract more business.

Agudemba was speechless.

At this time, a Bangladeshi woman's singing "A Girl on Fire" came from the distance:

 

she is a girl on fire

She has a hot and dazzling flame

In this world full of hardship and discrimination

She still burns like fire with life

 

she is a girl on fire

Even if the dream is far away and I am alone

As long as there is still a little fire burning,

She will be down-to-earth and work hard for life

 

she is a girl on fire

If you are treated unfairly

She will roar like a tiger

Instead of being silent, choose to roar in your heart

 

she is a girl on fire

Love that seeks perfection never lasts long

After suppressing it for so long, I finally say it out loud

She will never become a lonely cocoon

 

she is a girl on fire

She sang with a gentle voice that was a little sad and angry.

Explain the confusion about where you are

Like a ignited fire to position yourself