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Thursday, February 21, 2008

[chottala.com] Google Seeks More Concessions From Microsoft

Google Seeks More Concessions From Microsoft

In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Google has asked the court...
http://tinyurl.us/?f=BQWG

Google to Extend Business in Medical Field

Google Inc. plans to store medical records to test a service whereby people can retrieve their...
http://tinyurl.us/?f=NYHX

Sony Offers Scholarship To Female Gamers

It seems like there are too many men in the gaming industry. Or at least Sony believes so, based...
http://tinyurl.us/?f=CZ39

 

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[chottala.com] unsung heroes JAKIA KHATOON [From Karachi’s brothels and jails, Jakia has risen to become a respected tailor in her village ]

 

unsung heroes
JAKIA KHATOON
 
From Karachi's brothels and jails, Jakia has risen to become a respected tailor in her village
Recall 22-year-old Jakia Khatoon who had a traumatic journey from her home in Tripura to Pakistani brothels and Karachi jails, and who's return hogged the national limelight last November?
'Fighting poverty is not an enjoyable option, but I don't want to go back to the brothel'
Today, Jakia is the most dependable tailor for stitching women's garments in the village of Rabindranagar under Sonamura sub-division in Tripura, on the Bangladesh border. She is the bread-winner for her eight-member family. "It's a hard life and fighting poverty is not an enjoyable option, but still, I don't want to return to those days," she says.

Her day starts early in the morning. She prepares food for the family and by 9am enters her shop, ready to take orders from customers. A self-employed woman, Jakia got the sewing machine from the Kathalia Panchayat Samity. A woman taught her stitching that has ensured her a daily income of Rs 50 to 60.

Jakia's nightmare started with her marriage in 1997 in the Comilla district of Bangladesh. The marriage lasted for a year and she was thrown out of the house. Instead of returning to her ancestral home in India, she went to Dhaka looking for a job. It was here that she found herself trapped in a sex-trafficking racket which took her to Karachi.

Jakia was sold to a brothel owner, she was brutalised and beaten. There was no hope, till a raid by the Pakistani police rescued her. But it failed to ensure her freedom as she was a 'foreigner'. She was jailed.

Her trauma ended in November 2003 when India and Pakistan decided to release prisoners as a gesture of goodwill. She, along with others, returned to India and subsequently went back to Rabindranagar.

Unable to maintain the large family, Jakia's father Dudu Mian met Tripura's Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and sought a job for her. Since Jakia was illiterate, he advised her to join the local Sarbasiksha centre. Jakia pledged to become literate. She attends the local Sarbashikha centre every evening. "I will keep the promise I made to myself. I want to live a new life," she says
 
 
 
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[chottala.com] An Unbreakable Spirit - she never stopped fighting for her freedom

An Unbreakable Spirit

She was kidnapped, drugged, and sold to a brothel, where she worked for more than five years. The most remarkable thing about Aisha Parveen is not that she escaped-but that she never stopped fighting for her freedom.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nicholas D. Kristof reports
Nicholas D. Kristof
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For the first 14 years of her life, Aisha Parveen lived with her family in a village in the wild northwestern region of Pakistan, enjoying what in retrospect was a pleasant, cosseted, and rather boring life. Then, as she walked to school one day, she was hit on the head and knocked unconscious-and in the years since, nothing has ever been the same.

When Aisha awoke, she found herself imprisoned in a brothel in the Pakistani town of Khanpur, hundreds of miles away. (After knocking her out, her kidnappers had drugged her to keep her incapacitated during transport.) "I didn't know what had happened to me or where I was," she says. "Then, when the drugs wore off, they told me I was to be a prostitute." Aisha refused to comply. She wept, screamed, and pleaded to go back to her parents. She fought back against the men who entered her room to rape her, even when they beat her into submission. The brothel owner-a man named Mian Sher who was, like Aisha, a member of the Pashtun tribe- punished her with beatings and torture. At one point, he forced hot tongs into her vagina, says Aisha, to humiliate her and break her spirit.

None of this is particularly unusual in Pakistan. In fact, all around the world, girls in their early- and midteens are kidnapped and imprisoned in brothels, then raped and bullied- even forced to eat dog droppings-to break their will and make them accept their fate. These girls spend years in captivity, often until they are too sick with AIDS to attract customers. Numbers are elusive, but estimates by various organizations suggest that each year, hundreds of thousands of girls are forcibly trafficked into brothels. The United Nations has estimated that in Asia alone, 1 million children are held in conditions amounting to slavery.

Aisha, now 20, is fiery and feisty, a slender young woman who is quick with laughter and tears. As hard as he tried, Mian Sher was never able to break her. She continued to fight, despite the fact that during the years following her abduction, not a day went by when she wasn't beaten by Mian Sher or his wife. For six years, Aisha remained trapped inside the brothel. At night, she was forced to sleep naked so that she would be too embarrassed to try to escape. Two other girls also continued to resist-as a result, Aisha believes they were murdered. In any case, death may be imminent for all the girls at Mian Sher's brothel: None of them have access to condoms, and the potential for AIDS is immense.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
After six years of captivity, at the beginning of 2006, Aisha got a break. A metalworker named Mohamed Akram was doing work inside the brothel when he encountered Aisha and took pity on her. Sensing his sympathy, Aisha begged him to help her flee. A fledgling romance blossomed as the pair plotted her escape. Late on the night of January 5, Aisha rose in the dark, quietly put on clothes that she'd hidden, and slipped past Mian Sher (who slept in a bed between her and the door). She exited the brothel, locking her captor inside. Then she ran out onto the street, where Mohamed Akram had a car waiting. They were married the next day.

That should have been the beginning of a wonderful new life, but brothel owners in Pakistan are powerful men who often pay bribes to win support from the police. In this case, Mian Sher promptly went to the police, claiming that Aisha was his second wife, and that by running away with Mohamed Akram, she was committing adultery. The police filed charges against Aisha. Meanwhile, thugs apparently hired by Mian Sher tried to kidnap her several times. This was the point at which I met Aisha.

She was at her wit's end, hiding and terrified that Mian Sher would catch her. If he did, Aisha felt certain he would take her back to the brothel and rape, torture, then murder her. So I went to the brothel to interview Mian Sher, alone. A powerful, balding man, Mian Sher warily offered me tea. (Throughout our conversation, he also periodically flew into rages.) He denied that he ran a brothel, despite my encountering one of his customers in person as I entered the compound. When I asked why he wanted to have Aisha sent to prison, Mian Sher was very direct: After she was arrested, he would go to the jail and-as her nominal husband-bail her out. Then, he explained, she would be his again.

Aisha's court hearing was scheduled for the following Monday, so I rushed to use the regular column I write for The New York Times to call attention to her plight, before it was too late. My effort worked: The Pakistani government ordered the charges against Aisha be dropped, and Mian Sher was arrested instead. The police who had tried to hand her back to the brothel now offered her protection. Readers called the newspaper to ask how they could help. The U.N. invited Aisha to address a conference on sex trafficking in Vienna. While she is still worried for her safety, for the first time, Aisha has hope for the future. Although she believes she is infertile (the result of a forced abortion while she was in the brothel), she now plans to devote her life to fighting trafficking of other children, as a substitute for raising any of her own. Still, Aisha knows there are more than a million others still enslaved in the brothels of Asia.

I'll never forget my first conversation with her, when she exploded in tears at the thought of the courts returning her to Mian Sher. "God should not give daughters to poor people," Aisha told me despairingly. "And if a daughter is born, God should grant her death."

Join Marie Claire and Nicholas D. Kristof to End Sex Trafficking in Pakistan
Sex trafficking has received more attention in the past five years, and a handful of organizations are doing heroic work in fighting it.

The following are reputable organizations where you can volunteer your time or donate money:


To help Aisha build a new life, contact the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights: (www.4anaa.org).

Give the gift of compassion...volunteer:

A chinese lion statue

ANAA is an entirely volunteer run organization. We are the first group among Pakistani Diaspora that is increasing awareness about Gender Apartheid and Gendercide that is occurring in Pakistan. We increase awareness regarding Pakistani women and their struggle through human rights violations. Unjust laws like Zina Ordinance that makes it easy for any one to accuse a woman of adultery and then she has to pay with her life, dignity, and honor to prove otherwise. We are trying to bring forth the screams and horrors of women of Pakistan who suffer abuse, are repeatedly violated, but are never heard. You can help by volunteering for ANAA. Please join ANAA and write to 4anaapk@gmail.com or call 928-550-0062 and let us know how you wish to volunteer.
 
Please: Join ANAA
A network to raise voice against abuse of human rights in Pakistan

India: Landmark conviction secured against slave owner

Slave holder sentenced to fine and one year in prison; six former slaves free

» Read more...

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