Prostitutes, Stripped of Dignity, Strip for Citizenship
They Say Nepal Society & Laws Create Sex Slaves
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A Nepalese sex worker belonging to the Badi community makes a semi nude protest after climbing the gate of the Nepalese parliament Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007. Badi women demanded job training, reintegration of forced sex workers into the society, and seats in Parliament. AP photo: Binod Joshi |
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Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007
In Nepal, if a father doesn't sign the birth certificate, the child can't become a citizen.
The practice marginalizes poor children in Nepal, and leads many girls to lives as prostitutes. Some go into the sex trade willingly; some are kidnapped and taken to brothels in India. And if they bear children and don't know the father, their children, too, are denied citizenship in Nepal.
A group of sex workers overcame the shame and ridicule of their profession to publicly protest Nepal's discriminatory laws. The prostitutes demonstrated Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007, in front of Nepal's Parliament house in Katmandu. They called for citizenship for all children born in Nepal, job training for Nepalese sex workers and a guarantee of 20-percent of the seats in Parliament for members of their minority ethnic group, the Badi.
Authorities ignored the sex workers' protest, until a group began stripping off their clothes at the gates to Parliament Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007.
Police swooped in and hauled off the prostitutes.
"We detained five Badi men and eight Badi women as they tried to strip off their clothes during a demonstration," Kathmandu police chief Sarbindra Khanal told the Agence France Presse wire service.
"This is a restricted area, and protesting is banned," he added.
(Story continues below map of Nepal)
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Nepal, home to Mt. Everest, the world's highest mountain, is also home to one of the world's highest poverty rates. It ranks 166 out of 182 countries in terms of the entire gross domestic product per person, according to the International Monetary Fund. Even Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is richer than Nepal.
Katmandu has seen 11 days of strikes that have shut down schools, buses and roads. Many of the strikers are former Maoist rebels who last year gave up their armed revolution for a chance to change Nepal peacefully, according to an Associated Press story published Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007. The small group of sex workers were part of the larger strike.
In Nepal, where the caste system is still alive, many sex workers come from the Dalit, or untouchable, caste. Many Nepalese villagers banish troubled young girls, for fear they will corrupt their own daughters. Those girls often end up as prostitutes, according to an Aug. 2, 2007, article in the International Herald Tribune, a New York Times publication. The article, titled "Sex trafficking of girls leads to rise in AIDS" highlighted a recent Harvard study of Nepalese prostitutes. The study found the younger sex workers had double the rate of HIV/AIDS infection than older prostitutes.
