Closing down child traffickers

I learned this morning of the arrest of two more (alleged) leading child trafficking agents who have been taking children to the circuses. The first, a man called Shankar Basnet who has been operating in the south/southeast of the country, was picked up by our staff in Nepal and is now being held at Hetauda police station. I gather that, bizarrely, Basnet has been under the protection of the wife of one of our own former staff members so she may well soon find herself under arrest too. The other, a female called Tamang, has been arrested on the Indian side of the border from where she was (allegedly) sending children to circuses including The Raj Mahal, the one that we raided in June. Our Indian partner, ChildLine India Foundation, instigated that arrest. She has now been charged and awaits trial.

Our next circus rescue operation will take place next week. Details to follow, but for security reasons I will report these after the event.

Circus visit

I am leaving Kathmandu first thing tomorrow morning to join the team in India for a circus rescue operation. The target circus, which is in the area of Calcutta, has minors within its troupe. Hopefully we'll enjoy good cooperation from the local authorities and bring all of them home to Nepal and to the possibility of a real future.

Chances are I won't be posting for a few days.

Some light reading in Nepal

Some time ago a friend in the development sector, who had lived for many years in Nepal, offered me his secret for preserving sanity and staying calm. That was to always have a good book readily to hand, given the amount of time that one can spend sitting around outside people's offices. Others can waste your time here with alacrity in what can become a little game of status and power play. So I have decided to use my "spare time" here productively by working through some of the classics of literature. Recent reads have included Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (which provided a template for one of my film favourites of all time, "Apocalypse Now"), Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" (that inspired another outstanding film "The Hours") and the one that I finished last evening, F Scott Fitzgerald's staggering book "The Great Gatsby". It is intriguing to note the influence that Conrad's work must have had on early 2oth Century literature. For Conrad (whose first language was Polish) wrote so well and was in style so ahead of his times that there are clear echoes of his writing in the other two novels that I mention.

At the end of Heart of Darkness, the central character, Kurtz, who has been living amidst the surreal savagery (most of which has originated from cruel and exploitative European colonial influences) of the eldritch Congo jungle exclaims in his dying breath "The horror, the horror!" The same cri de coeur could justifiably be uttered in Nepal when you see what those who masquerade as human beings inflict upon others whom they perceive as lesser beings. As an example, I need look no further than today's Himalayan Times newspaper report on how the police have bust a human trafficking ring that was sending vulnerable Nepalese girls into India. There the girls would have a kidney stolen from them, then enter sham marriages with the traffickers only to be subsequently dumped in brothels. Can it get much worse?

The date for our forthcoming circus rescue has been slipping each day but now it's looking good for Wednesday of next week, most likely in Calcutta area. Hopefully we'll be successful in retrieving scores of trafficked Nepalese girls from a different kind of horror.

I must remember to pack a good book.

Meet the parents

We have been hosting representatives of the ChildLine India Foundation for the last couple of days on this their first working visit to the Esther Benjamins Trust in Kathmandu. Two of them, Kelvin and Komal, I had liaised with before on previous visits to India. They are still smarting following a joint attempt with us at circus rescue last summer that ended in defeat, with the team encountering a devious scoundrel of a circus owner who had protected himself well through links with the local authorities in that particular area. These two are as determined as we are that this should not be the end of the matter for that circus and nor should the failure be repeated elsewhere. To that end and to chart out the way ahead they brought with them a Delhi-based barrister, Nandita, who will be supporting the team. The very passionate Nandita is sharp as a razor and her emotions were fired up by meeting the children at our refuge who, well rehabilitated, were able to talk with her objectively (and even to her surprise with humour) about their experiences.

Yesterday morning we had a round table meeting with field staff, Trust office staff (who include two former circus girls), our own organisation's lawyer and two parents whose children are still languishing inside the circus. The purpose was mainly for the ChildLine India team to gain an understanding of how children are trafficked (from the parents' accounts), what they can expect once inside the circus (gleaned from the two former circus girls) and the historical difficulties experienced in rescue (from the field team). With my Welsh friend Duane Clifford-Jones, who is fluent in Nepali and Hindi, translating the exchange was quite electric and highly informative.

So often I have written sympathetically in our charity literature that agents prey upon the ignorant and naive parents of the children. The two who came to us yesterday were cases in point. However as Duane extracted from one of them (with great sensitivity) what had happened I felt a very different emotion. He told how he had pretty well handed over his daughter without even any financial transaction having taken place or paperwork. Two years later, and having heard nothing of his 12 year old daughter in the interim, he was feeling that he had made a mistake. Naivety and ignorance is one thing but this was just plain stupid and irresponsible, and for what he has visited upon his daughter he really deserves a good slapping. After the two parents had given their evidence we excused them from the meeting while we discussed the prevalence of sexual abuse within the Indian circuses.

Following yesterday's meeting we have agreed to launch another rescue mission, with the proper legal and networking backup, within the next two to three weeks, most likely on a major circus in Mumbai.

Heroes

Each year the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (G/TIP) publishes the TIP report giving an overview of the measures being taken against people trafficking in 150 countries. In the 2008 report the Nepal section will include a profile of "heroes" who are in the frontline, the heroes in question being the Esther Benjamins Trust's circus rescue team. Yesterday I forwarded a picture (right) of the team members for inclusion in the report. They are from left to right, Kumar Giri, Ganesh Shrestha and Bhim Lama. Ganesh and Bhim are former circus ringmasters, poachers turned gamekeepers.

I hope the accolade that these brave guys receive in the report leads to some funding being forthcoming (see yesterday's post on our desperate need). Otherwise they'll need to be stood down - I don't relish the prospect of telling them that - and girl victims of trafficking will have to remain trapped inside the India circuses. If that happens the 2008 TIP report will create the impression that something significant and positive is ongoing when in reality it may have already been terminated.

Organ theft

This time last year along with ChildLine India we conducted a rescue operation at The New Raj Kamal Circus in Uttar Pradesh, north India. Twenty girls were freed from modern day slavery and sexual abuse (see the film on my post of 11th December). At the time another Indian NGO rather hijacked the legal action against the circus owner, Lakhan Chaudhary, who allegedly was himself raping the girls. It all went quiet and the NGO refused to reply to our enquiries about progress of the case. At the end of last year it emerged that nothing had been done and Chaudhary was still a free man.

Working with ChildLine we are now going to attempt to prosecute Chaudhary and 14 of the girls that we freed are willing to give evidence against him. These witnesses are much more relaxed and confident than they were a year ago and for the first time have just revealed a further tragedy to add to the catalogue of horrors from that circus. A seven year old Nepali girl performer allegedly had a kidney removed from her and she died shortly afterwards. Apparently her parents were summoned to the circus and paid off in return for their silence.

If proven, this will be the first case of organ theft that we have come across in relation to child trafficking to the circuses.

The Politics of International Adoption

I read with much admiration an excellent essay that a friend sent me today on the politics of international adoption, as considered by Peter Conn, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania:

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=6&articlepage=1

In my post of 25th July "The Last Resort" I rejected the politically correct statements being made by ideologists like Gillian Mellsop, the Country Representative of UNICEF in Nepal, who at the time had gone on the record as saying that international adoption should be the last resort. Challenging these hollow, fawning viewpoints at the time I gave a short overview of the other options that were infinitely worse for the unwanted, unloved Nepali child - like ending up in a grim orphanage, on the streets, being trafficked or early death. Professor Conn's review complements this analysis, albeit in a much more erudite commentary.

That said, he does remind us that the process of adoption is always accompanied by "disruption, loss and mourning". In the midst of the joy that we new adoptive parents are revelling in at the moment it is appropriate to remember this and give a great deal of early thought to the future needs of our new sons and daughters who will have to cope with these sentiments. I can imagine how in the light of how the recent international adoptions have been so abysmally mismanaged by the Nepalese authorities some, if not most, parents may wish to have nothing more to do with Nepal. The reality we have to accept and work around is that the adopted child, teenager and future adult will always feel an affinity with their homeland. They may even fantasise about it as some kind of Shangri La - which it certainly isn't. As far as my daughter Alisha is concerned, we will be very open with her in the future about her background (what little we know of it) and of the ongoing situation - and desperation - of Nepal. She should never be made to feel "grateful" for what was an act of love on our part, but she should be given every opportunity to understand the pain and hardship of Nepalese society and the context from which she was adopted. Maybe one day she might even feel inclined to follow in our footsteps and put something back; I would be delighted by that but ultimately this will have to be her own choice.

The Esther Benjamins Trust now has a major Indian circus in its sights for a rescue operation within the coming month. Our field workers have already gone to the southeast of Nepal to research the families of children who have gone to that particular circus. Predictably, it seems that the circus has already been tipped off (doubtless by families who will receive a kickback for their collaboration) as I learned today that four girls have just been sent home to Nepal from that circus. Sometimes circuses do that in advance of a rescue to unsettle us or to improve their image. But once again our already acutely dangerous task will be made all the more challenging by tackling a circus that will be ready and waiting, having bought off everyone that matters in its locality.

I don't need any Christmas presents

In the past I used to be invited to share the joy of friends in the announcement of a pregnancy or a birth. I'd be sent ultrasound scans or pictures of the ruddy new arrival as the case may be. My delight for the new parents was certainly there but it could never be unqualified. You'd always wonder "Why not me (us)?" and it would inevitably be a time for sad reflection on how things could - or with "justice" should - have been. So I hope those readers who have experienced the pain of childlessness or who are waiting to adopt can indulge me as I write of this, my time for celebration. For this evening's celebration comes at the end of a long and bitter path which began with failed IVF attempts in my first marriage back in 1991/1992. It plummeted to the depths of despair with the suicide of my first wife Esther in 1999. And most recently it has seen a (quite needlessly) long 14 month wait for confirmation of an adoption process here in Nepal. But the celebration stems from the news that the Nepalese international adoption committee has approved our application for Alisha to become our daughter and now all we await is the signature of the secretary to the committee, Mr Neupane. And for the record for waiting parents that's case number 2060 with the committee having worked through (to my pleasant surprise) at lightning speed to case number 2065.

For the last couple of weeks we've had an appeal in place for the rescue of children and teenage girls who are trapped in the Indian circuses (see right). So far we have raised just £230 towards the £15,842 that we predicted would be needed to rescue 150 children from six circuses over the period January-June 2008 (a "planning assumption"). This morning I heard that the first circus on our list for January has no less than 200 trafficked and imprisoned girls so heaven knows where we are going to find the funds to raid that circus in January and to manage them post release. But the planning goes on regardless and the field team will be deployed next week to start collecting data and parents' statements/release requests. However I am sure that we will get a result and that 2008 will be for me a great year both personally and professionally.