Sheikh Hasina’s cook’s rescued daughter and other children

The news that Sheikh Hasina's cook's daughter has been saved and rescued from the brothel slums of Bombay is an enormously good and heart pleasing news. In these days of unheard sufferings of all kinds, one cannot but applaud this recovery of such lost people. The thought that the girl along with 27 other such children will now be united with their family makes everyone feel better. Meanwhile, without much ado the man who was responsible for sending her and others to the brothels should be hanged if possible. I don't think the law or public opinion thinks otherwise. It probably won't erase the horrid experience these girls have gone through, but it will definitely make many feel much better.

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In my peripatetic life, I have seen girls suffer in such situations in many places including South Asia. One doesn't have to be the father of a girl child to feel for these vulnerable kids. In India it is not uncommon to see them in various shelters and homes as well in brothels. Once in Shonagachi, while doing a series on sexuality for the BBC, my driver took me straight to a building and said, "Special for Bangladeshis. Have fun in AC rooms." It took me some convincing to make him understand that my business was not consumption of commercial sex in that place but interview empowered sex workers. A few days later he said, "What kind of a journalist are you that you go to where they do it but you don't do anything? How will you know? "

Seeing older sex workers, true you feel bad for them but with child-prostitutes, it just feels devastating.

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The centre in charge at Niketan in Kolakata told me once that many of the girls, many rescued from Bombay brothels had already been infected by the AIDS virus. "If you recognise the symptoms, don't be shocked and show it. We haven't told them yet." I remember the tall girl from Bangladesh at the rescue centre, wearing black shalwar kameez, her face already streaked by early symptoms of Kaposis Sarcoma, an AIDS related cancer. She talked with confidence about returning to Bangladesh. How the disease had progressed so rapidly I have no idea because she was not 18 yet.

But it is another girl that I shall never forget. She had been rescued from an infamous Bombay sex slum a year before. She talked longingly of her family whom she wanted to meet. The centre had informed the family but they refused to recognise her. "I know my family doesn't want me back because I will be a source of shame for them. But I just want to see them once. They don't have to meet me. If they just come and stand at the gate that will be enough. They don't have to talk to me. I want to see them once more, that's all".

As we talked, she began to cry but mercifully the light went off. Soon about 25 young girls had brought in candles and the room was filled with flickering lights. At my request they began to sing and as I faithfully recorded the sounds in my ancient analogue spool based tape recorder, the girl began to sing too hiding her tears and mine as well in the dark.

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While working in the African region in the first half of the '90s, I saw prostitution more closely than most as I worked on AIDS prevention. Separating commercial sex and the epidemic was impossible. I remember in a town of Northern Nigeria where at the hotel, which didn't have too many guests, a pair of mother-daughter worked. The mother was the pimp while the daughter served the clients. One day, I couldn't take it anymore. Hearing her say, "Hello sir" to me as soon as I entered the lobby like every other day, I went to her and gave her some dollars. That was the first time I saw the girl, maybe 14 years of age, looking at me with fearful eyes even as she gave me an artificial smile. I always ate in my room so I didn't see them again that night and they too didn't bother me anymore.

I am not a judgmental person but any society where a child has to whore with her mother acting as a pimp to feed the family is just WRONG!

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When I was in Ethiopia working on the same theme it was a city where the largest number of children and youth were dying of AIDS in the world. Yet the city — Addis Ababa — was beautiful and that made the tragedy even more horrific. It was right after Marxist military-dictator Haile Mangiste Mariam's ouster and the people suffered enormously and everything was in disorder. There I met Kiki, a beautiful girl, bright and articulate who had taken to the profession because of course everyone wanted to sleep with her. Her friend Daniel pimped for her and both had been at it for years. I paid 200 dollars for a single drink at the makeshift bar and when I left realising I had been set up, Daniel had me mugged.

A year later, in an amazing coincidence, I confronted Daniel at another place. He was embarrassed and scared and wondered what I would do. He just looked at me and said, "Kiki is dead". I shook my head in despair. What was I supposed to do? Have him arrested? He was no different from Kiki, and he too would die soon.

War and misrule had taken from them all the options to live.

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Nepal is another country which faces the problem of child prostitution very deeply. Perhaps what was once a profession that brought shame only now brings the scourge of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) in devastating configurations. Impoverished women travel each year to Mumbai to work in the brothels and return home often with some money, a belly full of diseases and often an infected infant soon to die.

I was visiting one rescue shelter when a small pile of human flesh began to cry. She was smaller than a handkerchief, the body already sore infested and full of visible bones. A woman came and took her in her arms rocking her as they would to put a child to sleep. The lady looked at me and smiled and said, "Mother is already dead. They brought her here last week. God knows how much time she has till she joins her mother.

In the end, it is the end that matters.

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But I am not talking of the wonderfully strong, incredible child-woman like Shahana of Tangail brothel who looked after her mother and children of other sex workers using her income. I always tell her story. Throughout my journalistic career, I have met very few like her. Imagine how much the country would have benefited if this child of a sex worker hadn't been forced to return to the trade because there was no one to look after her mother.

No choice given except sex work.

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So let us celebrate the rescue and return of the PM's cook's daughter and other daughters. They have been brought back home, hopefully to a better life surrounded by love and affection if not social acceptance. No matter what, the children are back with their families and let's sing to that.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a Consulting Editor of bdnews24.com.