To the women of Daulatdia: we will no longer stay silent
Written by Halimah Zakiuddin. Halimah is a teacher, artist and author, and works at a local school in London. She is passionate about justice and peace and volunteers at Human Appeal and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Daulatdia in Bangladesh is officially a brothel village, but it's more like a prison where women are forced into sexual exploitation, most of whom were trafficked here. They are made to stay against their will and have nowhere else to go. Around a thousand children live on the site, mainly in the same rooms where their mothers work, and girls as young as seven are groomed into this life. One girl started work at the age of eleven. A 2018 study conducted by the non-profit research organization, the Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), found that around 80% of the 135 sex workers surveyed said they had been trafficked or tricked into going to a brothel. Research by Reuters has found that many of the women take a steroid drug known as Dexamethasone, which helps them. But there are fatal side effects to this drug, where in the long term it can result in bone loss, muscle weakness, and cataracts.
Nearly 1,500 women and girls are packed inside the 12-acre site, which resembles an overcrowded slum, with densely packed alleyways lined with corrugated iron shacks, small shops and open sewers. Each woman in the brothel has to pay daily rent to the madams, who act as a go-between for more than a dozen landlords which own this area of land. When the girls arrive via a broker, often for a sum of around $200-300, they are forced to pay off this debt to the madams.
One thing is clear, none of the women chose this life. This is forced labour.
There is massive stigma associated with Daulatdia and this kind of work in Bangladesh. These women and children are marginalised and looked down on. Why should they be when they are forced into this life sometimes by family and have no other choice? Who do we blame, the women? Or the madams, the landlords, the customers, and even the government for allowing this to happen? Who are you to judge these women?
There have been many news reports and investigations into the issue in Daulatdia, including by the BBC, CNN, and a Swiss agency. Yet nothing is being done about it. Bangladesh is silent. The world is silent. We will no longer stay silent; we will no longer be complicit in one of the most horrific ways of exploitation.
It's time to take action. It's time to connect, work together, listen to the women, and educate people that this is wrong. But most importantly, it's time to outlaw this kind of exploitation and close down Daulatdia, replace it with proper homes and a place to work for the women. But to this we also have to break hundreds of years and cycles of exploitation, bearing in mind that Daulatdia has been in operation since colonial times and serves more than 3,000 male customers each day. The women don’t deserve this. Give them hope, give them a future. They are our sisters, and it is our duty to help them.
Linked articles
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/asia/daulatdia-bangladesh-brothel-as-equals-intl/index.html
About Amnesty UK Blogs
Our blogs are written by Amnesty International staff, volunteers and other interested individuals, to encourage debate around human rights issues. They do not necessarily represent the views of Amnesty International.
View latest posts
Our blogs are written by Amnesty International staff, volunteers and other interested individuals, to encourage debate around human rights issues. They do not necessarily represent the views of Amnesty International.
0 comments