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Sex slaves: trafficking of women in Asia

Chapter Six: The Management - part 2

Part 2: 6.14: Some more profiters of the brothel prison districts: merchants, medical doctors etc. -- 6.15: Women as merchants, brokers and brothel managers -- 6.16: Network of brothels and brothel prisons in Pakistan -- 6.17: Torture of girls and women into prostitution prisons by "seasoning" - examples -- 6.18: Dept bondage systems -- 6.19: Isolation and shifting girls and young women from town to town - flight and revenge -- 6.20: Reselling girls and women to other brothels - new debt bondage extortion begins -- 6.21: Security guards in and around the brothel prisons -- 6.22: Structures in Japan: girls in hotels and cars evading persecution by police -- 6.23: Principle: Economic crisis provoking harsher rules for prostitutes -- 6.24: Principle: passport confiscated by brothel owners or managers -- 6.25: Changes in sex industry - or no change -- 6.26: Sex industry is a men's product (says Louise Brown) - sex industry is a women's product (says Michael Palomino)

by Louise Brown

presented and with subtitles by Michael  Palomino (2013)

6.14: Some more profiters of the brothel prison districts: merchants, medical doctors etc.

Vendors at the brothel's door or in the brothel district

A whole host of trades and professions profit from prostitution. In South Asia women depend to a significant extent upon door-to-door vendors because they are either unable to leave the brothel or unable to leave the red light area. Vendors sell everything the women could want. They sell cosmetics, jewelry, clothes, trinkets [jewelry] and snacks. The cost of these items is frequently highly inflated because the salespeople have, quite literally, a captive market. When, as is often the case, the women do not have enough money to purchase the goods, the vendor will offer partial credit at hight rates of interest. They are guaranteed repayment because the brothel owner or manager will settle the bill and add the sum to the debt that the girl owes to the brothel.

Example: consumer goods from a vendor in brothels in Calcutta and Mumbai

A Nepali  woman who had worked in both Calcutta and Mumbai described the attraction of consumer goods and the high price she had to pay for them:

<When I first came to the brothel I didn't have any nice clothes and jewelry. At home I never had shoes and I only had one sari. The brothel owner said that if I worked hard I could have lots of nice things. Some salesmen came to the brothel and they brought some pretty dresses - saris and Western dresses. I choose two. I don't know how much the cost but the brothel owner said I had to serve lots of clients to pay for them. > (p.171)

Loan offers in the Asian brothel prison districts

Dubious financial institutions and loan sharks offer loans to women in prostitution. The rates of interest are usually astronomic because the women are unable to approach reputable financial institutions like banks. Loans might be needed for a variety of reasons:
-- to help with a family crises, and
-- especially to pay for medical treatment.

Medicine and medical doctors in the Asian brothel prison districts - also abortions, sexual diseases etc.

The medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry reap regular profits from sex work. Lucrative private practices cater to communities of prostitutes. This includes fully qualified, bona fide doctors and, in less developed parts of the region, a bizarre array of quacks and traditional healers. Abortions and the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases are the stock in trade of these practitioners although, in the poorer parts of Asia, most of the women also suffer from the many diseases associated with poverty, poor nutrition and an unhealthy environment.

India: medicine in the brothel prison district - hormones for the little girls becoming mature faster - surgery for the reconstruction of the hymen

In India, for example, sex workers spend a large proportion of their income on medication and doctors' fees. Abortions are preformed in grim clinics and women will call upon the services of a known and trusted - but not necessarily qualified or competent - health care practitioner to deal with their frequent bouts of STDs. A number of doctors visit closed brothels to treat the inmates. Some children are injected with hormones to stimulate sexual development and hasten their full-scale entry into the trade. A number of reports, which are often repeated but which I have yet to substantiate, suggest that a small number of doctors perform reconstructive surgery on deflowered girls to recreate the illusion of virginity.

The Indian National Commission for Women estimates that the medical profession makes an annual sum of Rs 20 crores [200 million Rupees] (3 million English Pounds) from women in the sex sector. The pharmaceutical industry makes another Rs 80 crores [800 million Rupees] (11.5 Million English Pounds). [11]

[11] National Commission for Women: Societal Violence, p.14

Japan: expensive abortions in brothels - debts extortion is simply rising

In Japan abortionists carry out a vast and lucrative trade. A proportion of these terminations are performed on sex workers. The high cost of these terminations is added to the debt the women owe and will be obliged to pay back through the sale of sex. There are two ways of (p.172)

interpreting these facts: either the medics, pseudo-medics, pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies are providing a vital service and helping to ameliorate [to improve] the awful health problems associated with a very unhealthy and exploitative trade. Or they are cashing in and profiting from a dreadful social problem.

[When Asian women do not know anything about sex and men are in the brothels because their wives are rejecting sex at home, then the problem is not only the man...]

6.15: Women as merchants, brokers and brothel managers

When we move further down the hierarchy of the sex trade from the criminal organizations and the web of powerful interests that protect and profit from it, we come to the people who are visible within the trade: the merchants [mostly WOMEN] and the brokers and the managers [mostly WOMEN]. These are the people who run the industry on a day-to-day basis.

It is almost invariably a woman who deals with the woman, with the clients and who is the intermediary between the sex workers and the senior, frequently male management. It is also not uncommon to find female brothel owners, who are usually former sex workers who have had ambitions.

The women managers of the brothels and of the brothel prisons

The female managers have a variety of names. Among the most familiar are mama-san, malkin and gharwali. These women have a mixed reputation. Most are in their forties, fifties and early sixties. They know the trade inside and out; they know what the clients want because they have serviced so many themselves. Despite the constraints [limits] imposed by the nature of the mama-sans' work, some sex workers speak of their managers with affection - referring to them as 'auntie' or as someone who watches out for them. Clearly, there are good mama-sans and bad ones too. A few will try to ease girls into prostitution gently and some with violence. Some treat the girls with callous [without heart] ruthlessness and others with care. I have met some mama-sans who have done the best for their girls within the milieu of brutal trade.

[WRONG: mama-sans are the main reason that selling of daughters and torture and exploitation of girls and women in these brothels and brothel prisons exist. They are mostly responsible for the "price of purchase" and for debt bondage slavery etc.].

All these female brothel managers have a quick and clever mind [for their own profit manipulating the girls and young women]. They are shrewd negotiators and, as I discovered many times and often to my disadvantage, they can assess [estimate] people and their agendas with ease. I have yet to meet a stupid mama-san. It is a pity that the sex trade is the only avenue [access] for their talents (p.173).

As in any business there are those who are good managers and those who are plain dictatorial. Unfortunately most managers in the sex trade are infinitely more concerned with making a profit than with promoting good human resource management. And because so much of the business of selling sex is the product of direct and indirect coercion, few mama-sans have to be concerned with creating a good environment for industrial relations. It simply does not matter.

[When poverty in Asia is never ending in the countryside, when the Asian government and the Asian industrial managers are racist against the population in the countryside never installing good jobs in the countryside, then prostitution really is the only way for getting some money...]

6.16: Network of brothels and brothel prisons in Pakistan

Pakistan: Daughters forced into prostitution financing drug addiction in the family

The Pakistani pattern of brothel management is different from that of the rest of South Asia. Although there are female procurers and managers, particularly in the traditional and elite sectors of the sex industry, low-class brothels are often family businesses run by men. Abdul Sattar Edhi is a philanthropist who runs a Karachi-based charity helping the poor and destitute [persons without money]. His organization operates homes throughout Pakistan that provide a place where women can seek refuge. Over a period of thirty years he has acquired an extensive knowledge of prostitution and its organization within Pakistan. From his experience he concludes that much prostitution is small-scale, centered upon families and often inseparable from drug addiction. Women, according to his viewpoint, are forced into prostitution in order to feed the drug addiction of their husband or father [spending the money for drugs].

[The same pattern can be seen in Thailand, simply with alcoholism when the daughter has to finance alcoholism in her family by prostitution].

Pakistan: brides are sold to brothels - and the husband is the pimp

The 'family' nature of prostitution in Pakistan is corroborated [confirmed] by Iqbal Hussain, a professor at the National College of Art in Lahore. He has lived for decades in Heera Mandi, the ancient red light district of Lahore, and knows the area well. Perhaps more than anyone else in Pakistan, Iqbal has an understanding of the industry and an emotional connection with the women working in it. He maintains [claims] that most of the new recruits to prostitution are born into the trade or brought into the brothels as brides. Usually the brides come from remote parts of Pakistan. Their husbands then act as their pimps. The women have to comply because they have absolutely no option. Once they are married they cannot return to their families, who believe that they have discharged their responsibility to their daughters. And (p.174)

they cannot leave their abusive husbands because they cannot support themselves either economically or socially as independent women unless they stay in sex work or join the elite group of highly educated women in professional jobs. [Mostly] only the first option is within their reach.

India: traffickers bringinging girls and women from Calcutta to Mumbai don't think anything bad

The brothel hierarchy in Calcutta bears resemblance [similarity] to that found in many red light areas in less-developed Asia. This hierarchy is strictly enforced. The community has its own subculture with its own standards and codes of conduct. Baitali Ganguly of Jabala, an NGO working with the children of sex workers in the Bowbazar brothel, describes how the value system of the red light areas makes a non-issue of abuses such as trafficking and debt bondage.

'Trafficking isn't considered bad by the boys and men from this community. It is just part of their job. They think nothing of trafficking children and women from Calcutta to Mumbai because they don't think they are doing anything wrong.'

India: NGO in Mumbai in Kamatipura district cannot save a girl from the WOMAN brothel manager (gharwali)

A case that underlines the strength of this subculture and the difficulty of breaking away from its embrace is described by the staff of the Committed Communities Development Trust. This NGO operates a health clinic for the sex workers of Kamatipura in Mumbai. It also runs a day-care center for the children of the women. One child had been in regular attendance at the center for many years and the staff had watched her grow up into a teenager. This girl's mother was very concerned about her daughter and wished to protect her from the worst effects of life in a red light area and to avoid the almost inevitable certainty that she too would be a prostitute.

She wanted something better for her daughter and that is why she had sent the girl to the center. One day the mother arrived at the clinic in a distraught [desperate] state. Her daughter, she said, had started her first period, and if the gharwali should discover this then the girl would be initiated into prostitution without any delay. Despite her mother's best intentions there was no escaping the all-seeing eye of the gharwali. There was no hope of resisting the pressures of life in an area in which a (p.175)

woman's only purpose is to provide sex to men and to earn money from its sale. A year later the girl, then fifteen, was being treated for gonorrhoea in the center's own health clinic.

India: Calcutta with hierarchy in Sonagachi brothel prison District

Sonagachi, Calcutta's largest red light area, has a complicated hierarchy. Houses are owned by individuals who rent out rooms. These are often sublet to malkins and independent sex workers who pay a daily rent each morning. The malkins have a great deal of power over the women they manage. Lower in the hierarchy are the pimps known as dada. Each brothel has its own pimps and the pimps are in competition with each other to bring clients to their respective brothels. The pimps are men, sometimes sons of sex workers but, even more often, they are from impoverished parts of the countryside around Calcutta [12].

[12] I am indebted to Sadhana Mukherjee, Secretary of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Samiti, Calcuta (a sex workers' organization), for her description of brothel hierarchies in Sonagachi.

Then there are the sex workers themselves and at the bottom of the heap are the domestic servants who work for the women. Many of these are men and, again, they are from desperately poor regions.

Calcutta: "babus" with prostitutes in Sonagachi

Other people operate within Sonagachi but their place within the hierarchy is not so clear. In particular, there are the babus, who are a combination of regular clients and partners for the sex workers. Some of these men are very powerful. They form relationships with women, visit them regularly, sometimes stay for periods with them, and live off their earnings. Frequently, babus form new relationships when their women begin to age and their earning capacity falls. The older women are then discarded [put aside]. For many prostitutes the cultivation of a relationship with a babu is the closest they will come to forming a stable permanent relationship with an adult male and many say that their most cherished dream is to find a good babu.

Calcutta: youth gangs controlling the prostitution districts

Local youths in Calcutta's red light areas form clubs that are often based loosely around political parties. In practice, these clubs are responsible for law and order in their respective areas. They monitor what is going on and hand out punishment when the community's codes are breached or when individuals challenge established hierarchies. Like other brothel areas, Sonagachi is a (p.176)

haven for thugs [gangsters] and criminals, who use it as a base and as a place in which they can hide, sometimes for months. It is common practice for these men to marry the daughter of a prostitute. They then live within the protection of the community for a few months before abandoning the new wife once it is safe and convenient to leave. Unsurprisingly, the rejected bride then becomes a prostitute herself.


6.17: Torture of girls and women into prostitution prisons by "seasoning" - examples

Example of Cambodia: a girl "seasoned" with beatings in a brothel by the men - and mama-san always "helps" the girl

Women who have been sold and tricked into prostitution tell familiar stories about the management techniques of the brothel operators. This was how a Cambodian woman described the mama-san of the brothel to which she was sold by a friend:

<The brothel was owned by a man and a woman. They were married and about forty years old. The mama-san was nice to me. She was the one who looked after us girls. She gave me food and drink and said that everything would be fine if I did what I was told. When I refused to entertain the customers the man got two men to beat me so that my arms bled. After that the woman was nice to me again and she put some bandages on me. She said she would ask her husband to be kind to me if I went with the customers. They were always getting a gang to torture us and then the mama-san would promise to help us if we did as we were told.>

Example when brothel owners are men: many rapes for "seasoning" the girls

Women in brothels that are run by men complained that they were repeatedly raped. In brothels that are managed by women some said that the mama-san had been fair, or that she was pleasant once the girl had been seasoned and no longer provided any trouble. A few spoke of terrible cruelty and, undoubtedly, some mama-sans perpetrate [perform] even greater evils than male customers upon the girls in their care.

Example of Mumbai (India): "seasoning" by torture with cuts and hunger

One young woman explained how the gharwali in Mumbai had treated her during her years of captivity:

<She liked to torture me. I don't know why she wanted to do (p.177)

that. She used to cut me with a little knife when the customers complained that I didn't give good service. And often she wouldn't give me food so that I was always hungry.>

[Here we just see that above all WOMAN brothel managers are the Nazis in Asian sex business. And there 100s more examples].

The WOMEN brothel managers' range of action "seasoning" girls and women: torture, control, extortion

Violence of this kind rarely has to be inflicted upon seasoned sex workers but it is common until a woman is conditioned. Control is the key to understanding the management style of most brothel mama-sans. This applies to fresh recruits whose will to resist needs to be broken and also to seasoned women who require a more sophisticated method of management.

Example of Mumbai: the WOMAN brothel prison manager is blocking repeated contacts to customers by threat of murder

One of the principal means of doing this is to ensure that the women do not begin to establish relationships with people outside the brothel [prison]. In Mumbai, for instance, brothel managers will ensure that clients do not visit the same debt-bonded girl on a regular basis. This forestalls [hinders] the development of any personal attachment between the prostitute and the customer, which can sometimes lead to customers facilitating a girl's escape. This was how a young Mumbai prostitute described her relationship with one of her customers and how it was ended by the gharwali:

<I didn't have any friends in the brothel. Most of the time I stayed in a little room. One customer felt sorry for me. He was a young man and he used to come and talk to me and bring me food. The gharwali was very angry about this and said that she would get some men to kill him. I don't know if he was killed but he never came back. I was sad when this happened because he was nice to me and I liked him.>

Example of Cambodia: "seasoning" with torture forbidding contacts between two sisters

The experience of two Cambodian sisters who were sold to a brothel by a couple they had met tells a familiar story of how women's existing relationships and emotional bonds are broken down by the brothel management. One of the sisters described what happened to them (p.178).

<Right from the start the mama-san kept us apart. I never saw my sister except when I went to the bathroom I would sometimes see her in another room. I wanted to go to her and talk but it was forbidden. After a while we were both sold to new brothels and I never saw her again>

[Well, it's absolutely clear now who are the Nazis in Asian sex business: The Nazis are the WOMEN selling their children - and then seasoning them with brute methods].


6.18: Dept bondage systems

Dept bondage torture with up to 300% interest rates

The most efficient mama-sans exercise the strictest control over the women in their charge [in their brothel prison]. The debt bondage system is manipulated ino order to maximize leverage over women. In Delhi, women's debt to the brothel owners has been reported to be subject to rates of up to 300% a year [13].

[13] S.A. Lalitha and S.C.N. Shalini: Women Soliciting Change (New Delhi: India Social Institute and the Joint Women's Program, 1996), p.24

When these rates are applied to a large initial debt it can take many years to pay it off.

[The Nazis in the Asian sex business are the WOMEN - evidence provided].

Example: debt bondage torture in Calcutta during 12 years without any balance

A sex worker in Calcutta in her late twenties explained how the debt was used to control her:

<I worked in the chukri [bonded labor] system for twelve years because my debt was big and it never went down and I could not pay it off. Most of the clients were good but it was difficult to refuse them because the brothel owner decided who we would accept and how much it cost. She said I had to entertain them because otherwise I would never be free. I wasn't paid any money for twelve years. I only got tips.>

[The Nazis in the Asian sex business are the WOMEN - evidence provided].

Example: debt bondage torture in Cambodia and body control if there are tips

A Cambodian girl explained how the regime operated in her brothel.

<The mama-san was very clever and very cruel. She chose my clients and told me to entertain them. I couldn't say no. And I never got any money. The mama-san would even check my body after a customer had been and she would take away any tips.>


6.19: Isolation and shifting girls and young women from town to town - flight and revenge

Women are made to feel isolated and disoriented in order to increase the degree of control exercised over them. In countries like (p.179)

Japan and Cambodia, girls are moved from sex establishment to sex establishment partly in order to cater to customer demand for new women and also to increase the women's sense of vulnerability and lack of control over their lives. In Cambodia, girls are moved on when brothel owners realize that a family is trying to trace its daughter. A similar practice is encountered [can be seen] in Thailand.

Even women who manage to escape live in fear of recapture. The homes that shelter young women who have managed to flee from brothels in Phnom Penh are difficult to find. Purposely so. Some are also fortified because armed men from the brothels [the armed gang of the cruel mama-san] are anxious [eager] to reclaim the women by force so that they can recoup their investment.


6.20: Reselling girls and women to other brothels - new debt bondage extortion begins

Reselling a woman to another brothel has considerable advantages because it also condemns the woman to a new period of debt bondage. Because she is sold to a new owner she then has to repay yet another debt. It is not uncommon for (WOMEN) brothel owners to resell girls who are approaching the point at which their debt will be cleared. They are thus locked into sexual slavery again.

Similar manipulation of women's debt is found all over Asia. In Cambodia for example, brothel owners arrange with the police for a prostituted woman to be arrested when she is nearing the end of her period of bonded labor. The kindly brothel owner pays the police to release her and will then tell the woman that she must pay a highly inflated price to cover the cost of this release. This sum is added to her debt. Another favorite trick is to arrange for the woman to be beaten and to need medical treatment. Again the brothel owner will step in to help with the cost of the medical expenses - thus increasing the woman's debt.

[The Nazis in the Asian sex business are the WOMEN - evidence provided].


6.21: Security guards in and around the brothel prisons

Effective brothel management requires good security. This is especially true in countries in which prostitution is technically illegal or in which a large number of women have to be physically coerced into the trade.

Example: raid of brothel prison "Max 29" in Malaysia

A raid on a Malaysian brothel in July 1997 illustrated the lengths to which brothel owners will go in order to ensure secrecy and security. The 'Max 29' brothel [prison] was the largest ever (p.180)

raided in the country: Thirty-seven women were rescued from a prison-like brothel that resembled a fortress. It was situated on the second and third floors of a building, and the only means of access was through a heavily guarded triple-layer steel door. Within the brothel there were hiding places for the women and lots of small cubicles in which they serviced up to twelve clients a day. Virtually all the money from sex work went directly to the brothel owner, and the women were not allowed out.

Thai girls lured and tricked to Malaysia for "jobs" - customer helping her with a mobile phone

The young Thai women who were incarcerated there had gone to Malaysia after being promised jobs, primarily as domestic helps, and they had managed to alert the outside world to their plight only after one of the women had gained access to a client's mobile telephone and had called home [14].

[14] 'Thai Girls Rescued from a Kuala Lumpur Brothel'; Global Alliance Against the Traffic in Women Newsletter, October-December 1997

The discovery of the 'Max 29' brothel [prison] and the revelations about the conditions under which the women were kept corroborates allegations that Thai sex workers have made against Malaysian brothels.

Malaysian men going to Thailand for brothels

Brothel-keeping in Malaysia seems to be a more risky business than in Thailand and many Malaysian men travel to Thailand to buy sex. [Something with the restrictions against love is not in order in Malaysia as it seems].

Malaysian brothels with many hideouts in the case of raids - hidden conditions for girls and women in Malaysia

Thai women who have worked in Malaysia report extremely sophisticated methods of control and subterfuge [excuse strategies], with brothels possessing secret rooms and passages in which to hide women in the event of a raid. Significantly there are few active organizations working on sex workers' rights and the trafficking of women in Malaysia. We should not assume therefore that the problems of prostitution do not exist in Malayais. In fact, the reverse may even be true [for example similar conditions like in Pakistan]. The power and control of the management is undiminished [not changing] even in those areas in which the sex industry is diversifying and moving away from the traditional brothel sector.

Because these newer parts of the industry are more sophisticated, the levers [pressure] of controls are less overt [clear to see]. They may, however, be even more powerful.


6.22: Structures in Japan: girls in hotels and cars evading persecution by police

Parts of the sex industry in Japan are becoming almost invisible and impossible to monitor. In some instances trafficked girls do not have a base. They do not live or work in a brothel but are driven around in cars while waiting for a mobile phone call from their boss who will then (p.181)

direct the driver to a particular hotel for an appointment with a client. These girls claim that they do not know who they work for and that they have never met their bosses. They live in small hotels or apartments and are collected for work by drivers who also may not know who employs them [15].

[15] In conversation with the staff of HELP Asian Women's Shelter, Tokio, Japan


6.23: Principle: Economic crisis provoking harsher rules for prostitutes

Asia's recent economic crisis was bad news for Asia's prostitutes. This was not because it cut down client demand - and in the brothel sector this was only a minimal reduction - but because it gave the brothel and club owners a further excuse to tighten control over women. In Bangkok even those sex workers who are ostensibly the most empowered, and who do not work in systems of sexual slavery, reported that owners were placing new demands upon them. Girls working in Patpong clubs were not allowed out and were required to sleep on couches so that they could be available twenty-four hours a day to service men in the back rooms [16].

[16] In conversation with Suryang Janyam, EMPOWER, Bangkok


6.24: Principle: passport confiscated by brothel owners or managers

In the more developed parts of the region a favored management technique is to keep trafficked women dependent upon the brothel owners and managers. Confiscating a woman's passport is an effective means of doing this because it deprives the woman of mobility and strips her of her legal status.

[This counts only for women with a passport. In many Asian countries and in Latin "American" countries many women live without any passport for life becuse poverty and national pride there does not permit any international traveling].

In Taiwan employers of migrant women sex workers and those who have been trafficked confiscate the women's passports. As many of these women do not possess work contracts they are rendered terribly vulnerable and, ironically, many come to believe that their manipulative boss is the only person who can protect them from the police.

Exactly the same thing happens in Japan. The study of one hundred Filipina women who were trafficked to Japan found that eighty-four of the women had their passports confiscated on their arrival [17].

[17] International Organization for Migration: Trafficking in Women to Japan for Sexual Exploitation, p.36

They were returned to them only when the women were on the point of leaving the country [when the main fraud is often performed handing out only the half or less of the promised salary].

[Passport confiscation is also performed in brothels in Europe - is a normal extortion in prostitution business - for example with Hungarian or Caribbean girls in Switzerland].

6.25: Changes in sex industry - or no change

The shape of the sex industry is changing in Asia, as it is in the rest of the world. But the old patterns of power and control are identical (p.182).

In the more developed parts of the region [of Asia] the industry seems different because it is more sophisticated. However, the stories told by women who because prostitutes half a century ago are remarkably similar to the stories told today. Only the physical surroundings are different. In affluent [upper class] Asia, sex workers may have better food, work in establishments with air-conditioning and be contacted by cellular phones, but the power structure that created their place in the world is exactly the same. We can guarantee that in another fifty years the basic structure of prostitution will be similar, but that the business will be made more acceptable by raised living standards, improving technology and the thorough commercialization of sexual desire.

In poverty-stricken Asia the parallels with fifty years ago are very close because the quality of life within these countries has improved only marginally.

[respectively poverty in the countryside in Asia is wanted by the government thus a steady stream of young women is coming to the brothels being sold or voluntarily. This racism against the population in the countryside is a racism of high political upper class by women and men in common].

Example Calcutta prostitution district of Kirdipur [Sonogachi?]: conditions have worsened because there are more poor girls (!)

[Kirdipur is a town in Nepal].

A retired sex worker and brothel manager, who is in her late sixties and still lives in the red light area of Kirdipur in Calcutta, explained how the sex industry has changed shape over the years while retaining all of its old forms:

<I have been here for about fifty years. I was trafficked from Bangladesh. Many girls still come from the area around my own village, so things are the same now as then. The trafficking was the same. But some things are different. Conditions are much worse these days. Before, there wasn't so much competition. We could make a better living and live quite well. Now all the girls are poorer. There are so many poor girls and they compete against each other and drive down the price. And there are always new girls so the older ones get paid less if they want customers. It was much better when I was young.>

Example Pakistan: woman is sold from husband to husband working as a prostitute for the husbands - nothing is changing

An elderly prostitute in Pakistan related a very similar experience of life in the sex trade around forty years ago (p.183):

<I came from a village in India. My family was quite well-todo and I went to school. One day when I was on my way to school some men kidnapped me and took me to a place a long way from my home. I was about twelve years old and I was married to a man who was middle-aged. He had a cart - and carried goods for people. He also sold me to lots of men. For a long time I was locked in a room and tied with a chain so that I wouldn't run away. After a while I didn't want to run away and I stayed with the man. He had another wife who was older. After about ten years he divorced me and I married another man. I did the same kind of work and entertained men who came to the house. After that husband I had two others. I never had children. I don't know why. I would have liked to have some children but God did not bless me with any.>


6.26: Sex industry is a men's product (says Louise Brown) - sex industry is a women's product (says Michael Palomino)

Writer Louise Brown states that sex industry would work for and would be managed only by men

Even if impoverished Asia was to suddenly switch into the fast track of economic development we can guarantee that the sex industry would accommodate the new circumstances. It is already accomplishing [completing] this feat [artistic work] in affluent societies. It might become a more professional and glamorized industry but its management structure will remain the same. Workers may be empowered within the industry but the industry itself will remain the product of men. Whatever the short-term benefits it may grant to successful female prostitutes and to those women who make it into the management division, the sex industry works to the benefit of most men and to the detriment of [damaging] most women.

[WRONG: sex industry is working mostly for and by WOMEN
-- for WOMEN mothers and their families selling their daughters
-- for WOMEN brothel owners and their families
-- for many WOMEN trafficker
-- and only then come men trafficker and pimps, but mostly the pimp in a brothel is a WOMAN pimp, the owner of the brothel
-- and only then come the male customers only giving money, or many even want to help the victims, and sometimes the customers are also robbed].

That is exactly why it is so successful.

[WRONG: sex industry has WOMEN at the most important spots
Sex business is successful because WOMEN are selling their daughters, and because WOMEN are brothels and brothel prisons manipulating, torturing and extorting and exploiting girls and young women. These elder WOMEN managing the brothels are the substitutional mother for the girl and for the young lady. That's the main trap of the brothel business - not the men.

AND: Legalization of prostitution is missing
And the most important point is that prostitution is mostly considered illegal in Asia and the governments are not doing anything for a legalization so the prostitutes would have clear rights. The guilty persons in the governments with WOMEN Ministers of Family, WOMEN Ministers of Culture, and WOMEN Ministers of Education, responsible for the topic of prostitution in a country, are since 20 years mostly WOMEN and there is practically NO CHANGE.

AND: Elimination of poverty in the countryside
Poverty without end is the main reason for prostitution in Asia. Poverty can be overcome
-- with an inter-state fiscal adjustment between poor and rich parts of the country
-- with social institutions e.g. with the installation of a rent for widows (widow's pension)
-- and placing industries also in the countryside and not only in the capital

Responsible for these topics are men and women IN COMMON for leading families in the countryside out of poverty].

The order for feminists: read precisely
All feminists like German wrinkle bitch Alice Schwarzer only "degrading" men since 50 years are ordered to see clearly that at least in Asia the WOMEN are providing the biggest contribution to the prostitution system, also to child prostitution system].

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Sources

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