Melange

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in my not-for-profit business initiative in Nepal, Himlayan Mosaics. For the first time the girls' exquisite products were on sale in a retail outlet, a new shop called "Melange" in the upmarket Durba Marg area of Kathmandu. The shop was packed with friends and well wishers to shop owner Pratima Thapa on her first day of business. We managed to sell eleven mosaics yesterday with the most popular one being of koi carp, a design by former volunteer art teacher with the Trust, professional artist Rebecca Hawkins. Most intriguingly I was approached by a visitor who has the responsibility of re-designing one of Kathmandu's leading hotels which has 80 bedrooms and who is interested in talking about mosaic possibilities. Often these things come to nothing but if it did this would give the new company just the boost that it needs and work to a LOT of our beneficiaries.

Himalayan Mosaics presents a great opportunity as it gives my circus survivors rewarding employment and an income but I still have the need to fundraise significant amounts of funds for the Trust's ongoing work as the credit crunch is already starting to bite hard. With my about to go on another circus rescue next week, I feel the need of those funds very acutely.

Artistic creativity

At the start of this year when volunteer sculptor Rebecca Hawkins joined our art workshop for trafficking survivors she expressed interest in encouraging the girls (who have mostly been rescued from Indian circuses) to produce some items to their own design. I was deeply sceptical at the time as Nepal is very much a copycat society where "artists" have a tendency to copy the ideas of others or work from photographs. Indeed, when she prompted the students to design their own mirror frames in mosaic she found that they did so only under extremes of protest. But they produced results nonetheless and I was appropriately humbled.

Last week the latest volunteer sculptor from the UK, Denise Bryan (pictured right), was very proud to be able to show off to me little figurines that the girls had made in private after banning her from the studio for a couple of hours! These represent village women and each figure has its own identity reflecting the work of an individual artist - so the girls hadn't been copying from one another. I believe these figures can now be turned into very marketable ceramics that have a very ethnic, almost aboriginal, feel to them.

Reflecting on this surprising outcome, I can only attribute this to the success with which we have developed a relaxed "creative space" at the Godawari workshop and in how the girls have grown in self-confidence. The aims of the workshop have been achieved and I am sure much more success - and surprises - lies ahead.

A Study on Male Trafficker Prisoners

Last evening I read a report by The Daywalka Foundation, Nepal, on their research conducted in March 2006 of male trafficker prisoners inside Kathmandu jails. Of the 4,153 prisoners nationally (90% male, 10% female), 252 were males who had been convicted for trafficking and 91 female. Although the purpose of the study was stated as being designed to explore human trafficking from a "holistic" point of view it was not clear why it should have been based solely on interviews with male prisoners. Nor was it clear why prisoners in the rural jails were excluded from the research.

The principal investigator was a lawyer, Adv Shyam Pokharel. The information he obtained from the prisoners was very useful in terms of how they had gone about their activities and the economics of buying and selling human beings. But I was really shocked at how in a detached way - as if it seemed perfectly normal - he reported on the use of physical and mental torture on suspects while in police custody. The former includes practices like handcuffing, beating, electric shocks, denial of water and solitary confinement while the mental torture ranges from abusive language to death threats to promises to parade the suspect's wife naked in public. Almost 73% of those interviewed reported some form of torture, with 15% of these indicating physical torture and the remainder mental torture.

That was all bad enough, but then I read of how the researcher's analysis (and he is clearly no fool) suggested that almost 17% of those convicted were probably innocent of any crime. They were more likely to have been in jail because of the denunciation of others due to a personal vendetta (common practice in Nepal) or because of a misinterpretation of evidence. The inmates concerned were considered too poor to be able to fight a legal battle to establish their innocence. Pokharel gave an example of four youths who had joined a young girl on a trip to India at the promise of "work" by an agent. They were stopped by the police and themselves charged with trafficking. The prosecutor asked the court to impose a 5-10 year sentence but the court in the end awarded terms of 2.5 years. Pokharel felt that the reduced term indicated that the court recognised that they were innocent! In another case report he tells of how an uncle denounced his nephew as a cross border trafficking agent following the uncle's wife leaving home after a domestic quarrel. The nephew received a 12 year prison sentence. One year later when the aunt heard about this (she had settled elsewhere in Nepal and re-married) she came to Kathmandu to set the record straight and secure the lad's release. However The Supreme Court ruled against her as an appeal should have been lodged within 70 days of his original conviction.

Rather remarkably, considering that the report has been written by a lawyer, it gives no indication as to what action (if anything) has been taken or should be taken over these apparent miscarriages of justice. While I haven't the slightest sympathy for legitimately jailed agents - I know only too well the consequences of their crimes upon children - I am appalled at the injustices that go with the conviction of supects and the subsequent lack of redress for those who have been wrongfully jailed. Of course in the West, those 73% who experienced some form of torture (if true) would have had their cases thrown out of court on the grounds of inadmissable evidence irrespective of whether or not they were really guilty.

Nepal needs some really good human rights lawyers who will stand up for the prisoners as well as for their victims.

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.

Land of the Tiger

The girls at our Himalayan Mosaics workshop are now producing smaller and more detailed mosaics. This makes these exquisite mosaics easier to sell to tourists, who might have limited packing space, and cheaper to export. The latest designs of Nepali flora and fauna by my wife Bev seem to have developed along a tiger theme. Pictured right (awaiting grouting) is a tiger orchid, a common tiger and plain tiger butterfly and, er, a tiger. All mosaics are a mere 18 cm by 15 cm. Most excitingly we are now producing our own hand made tiles which are cut up to make the mosaics. This will increase the range of colours that are available. If anyone would like to order a mosaic or mosaics (and give a survivor of child trafficking employment) then just drop me a line.

Recently a supporter in the UK tested what I consider to be a fairly unreliable postal service by sending us a modest consignment of clothes for the children at our refuges. Yesterday the clothes were received in Kathmandu and they were put straight away to good use by the boys in the picture below. This means so much to us as the quality of locally available clothes is poor and the need is great given the 170 kids that we are looking after at the moment. If you'd like to follow this supporter's example (and are prepared to risk the loss of second hand clothes that would be subsequently untraceable) then please post what you've got to:

The Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation

PO Box 26050

Sundhara

Kathmandu

Nepal

Thanks!

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.

Making a dent

In yesterday's post I commented on how I was increasingly of the impression that the best that one could do in the fight against girl trafficking was to make a significant "dent" in the problem; sadly I feel that the scale and economics of human trafficking makes the fight unwinnable given the limited resources a Trust like mine can muster. However, I added that I felt one had to continue to try to make that dent else one forfeits one's right to remain part of humanity.

After reading my post my wife Bev reminded me of the content of an amazing obituary we had read recently. It was for Polish lady Irena Sendler who passed away this month at the age of 98. During the war, as a gentile social worker, she risked her life to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto. Later in the war she was captured and in return for her courage was tortured by the Gestapo.

Of course it could be argued unkindly that this heroism had but a modest impact given the scale of the Holocaust. Indeed, at the end of her days Irena herself remained haunted by the thought of how she could or should have done more. Nevertheless last year she was honoured by the Polish senate which had no doubt about her contribution as a national heroine. She had made that significant dent. Irena was too frail to attend the ceremony, but instead one of those children she rescued read out a letter in which she stated "Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory".

I am very pleased to share that philosophy, not least in the context of the motivation, professional background and beliefs of my first wife, Esther Benjamins.

A job interview in Nepal

A few years’ ago I listened to a programme on Forces Radio that had been compiled to mark some anniversary of the launch of the service. In it presenters reflected on some of their golden moments from over the years with one veteran, Richard Astbury, recalling how another, Richard Nankivel, had been the victim of a prank. He recounted how an interview had been set up between a visiting foreign dignitary and Nankivel on live radio. His mischevious colleagues hadn’t told Nankivel beforehand that the visitor didn’t speak a word of English.

I was reminded of this anecdote yesterday when we conducted interviews for a new researcher’s appointment within my INGO, Esther Benjamins Trust – Nepal (EBT-N). Chairing the interview, I invited my colleague Chris Kendrick to initiate the questioning of the final candidate who had quite a strong, well-written CV. None of us could have guessed from this that she hardly spoke a word of English. Chris was visibly discomfited by the experience, his own excellent command of English stretched to the limit, writhing as he tried in vain to frame a question that the unfortunate lady would understand. The amazing thing was that she seemed to remain quite cool during this process; I’d have run a mile. In the end I called a premature halt to the interview and we sent her on her way. I guess she, like so many other Nepalis in a land where there is so little work to be had, tries her luck with every appointment that is advertised. You’ve got to admire the tenacity if not the wisdom of it all.

The successful candidate, who has a Masters in Law, was effusive about her interest in joining our effort against trafficking. This is a subject that has been greatly on my mind these past few days, following my unsuccessful fundraising attempts for our Programme in Nepal and after receiving this rather depressing article from my co-worker in Nepal, Helen Sherpa.

Given the scale of the problem and the vast amount of money that is involved in the traffickers’ and collaborators’ ill-gotten gains I really wonder if this, like poverty and prostitution, is an issue that is going to be with us always. We have nothing to counter this with apart from commitment and courage, but these are insufficient if not underpinned by a financial input that just can’t rival the economics of evil that we are up against. When I asked the young lady yesterday what she saw as being the solution she felt it was just a question of interested organisations pulling together to maximise their effort. There is some truth in this but there is also the reality to contend with of the rivalry that inevitably arises between organisations that have similar agendas and are forced into a situation of competing against one another for scarce financial resources (grants).

My depressing conclusion from all of this is that the best we can do at the end of the day is to make some kind of a significant dent in the criminal activity that goes with modern day slavery. And we must do this if we are not to forfeit our right to be part of humanity.

As Bev was carrying Alisha down the hallway this morning Alisha pointed behind her and said “Incey Spider”. When Bev looked around Incey turned out to have the proportions of a dinner plate.

Kathmandu massage

The most common search words on Google that lead researchers to my blog are "Kathmandu", "Nepal" and "massage". For some reasons the sex tourists never use the words "prostitute" or "brothel". So for those visitors to this post who are considering to travel all the way to Nepal for a "massage" I thought I would post a picture of the kind of facility to expect; these salubrious premises are just around the corner from my home. If this doesn't make you review your plans then reflect upon the circumstances of the girls who are involved in the "massage" industry. They are often coming from desperately poor village areas and broken homes to be ruthlessly exploited by pimps - oops, proprietors. And if that doesn't bother you particularly you might be interested to learn that many of the girls who have been trafficked to India into the sex trade are sent home after they contract HIV. They duly enter the domestic sex trade and carry on their activities out of desperate need for an income.

Maybe best to stay at home?

Inclusion

This election was unquestionably the most inclusive that Nepal has ever seen, with appropriate representation of women, minority ethnic groups, and candidates who were disabled or from sexual minorities. And as a consequence Nepal now has its first openly gay parliamentarian, gay rights activist and chairman of the Blue Diamond Society, Sunil Pant. I have only ever heard positive comment on Sunil and must admire the courage of those who could dare to be themselves in such a discriminatory, conservative society. I wish him well in his political career and I am sure that he will have a valuable input to the drafting of the new constitution. I can't help wondering though what my commentator that I mentioned in my post of 17th April makes of this development. Perhaps it is just as well that I have disabled the comments facility on this blog.

Last evening I attended the wedding reception of the brother of my colleague, Bhaskar Karki. Bhaskar is the general manager of Himalayan Mosaics and I was touched that he had also invited the Himalayan Mosaics (former circus) girls to the evening. It is probably unheard of for these survivors of girl trafficking to attend a gathering that included in its number the commander of the Nepalese army. Bhaskar probably has done more for the girls' self-esteem and sense of acceptance than the Trust could ever do.

South China Morning Post (again)

In my post of 3rd February I mentioned that day's South China Morning Post Sunday magazine's coverage of our work against child trafficking in Nepal. The magazine has kindly allowed us to reproduce the article and here is what was written:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/assets/pdf/morningpost2008.pdf

Time to dream

One of my great discoveries last year, apart from the joys of Blogging, was the fascinating content of YouTube. There's some great stuff in there, not least The Esther Benjamins Trust playlist (see right for all of our video footage). This morning I dipped into the generally available material relating to circuses and found this film which is fairly representative of the terribly dated performance that one can expect to see when the Indian circus comes to town:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoYL5NO8IF0

And of course, as I have written in so many of my previous posts, the audiences have little idea of the scale of violence, abuse and exploitation that trafficked Nepalese child and teenage performers have to endure on a daily basis during their de facto imprisonment within the circus.

Moving on from that I found another circus performance by The Dreamtime Circus that couldn't contrast more with the Indian "show":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTH3lZ1n_l0

This San Francisco based organisation (www.dreamtimecircus.org) lays on free performances around the world. Their mission, as per the website states:

"The Dreamtime Circus is a troupe of fire fairies, clowns musicians, and all types of other magical and fantastical creatures who travel far and wide to share the uplifting experience of the circus with the peoples of the world.

We seek to use fire and circus arts as mediums for fostering cross-cultural communication and open exchanges of cultural ideas and artistic expressions.

As offerings of good will and solidarity, we perform free circus performances for the communities we visit, focusing our efforts on serving those surviving natural disasters, dislocations, or military conflicts.

Wherever our travels take us...
~ We'll create a safe, magical, and inspiring space for kids and grown-up kids to play. create and become whatever their imaginatin allows them to be.
~ We'll cross cultural bridges, speaking the universal languages of art and laughter through our circus antics.
~ Instead of just the coins in our pockets, we'l offer free circus shows as a way of giving back to the communities we meet along the way.
~ We'll respect the people, cultures, and sacredness of the land.
~ We'll dream our lives, live our dreams, and encourage everyone aruound us to join in."

To my great interest, the circus is now on tour in India and I wrote to them immediately to see if they might be interested in helping our advocacy work against modern day slavery and child trafficking. I'd give my eye teeth to entice them across the border to lay on a show or shows in Nepal. Not only would this raise the profile of our cause but I think it would be very useful for our beneficiaries - for whom the circus represents only stigma and an enduring legacy of horrors - to see the status of the modern circus as a true art form.

Our volunteer sculptor's letter from Nepal

Rebecca Hawkins is a professional sculptor who is coordinating the second of my Trust's Child Trafficking Victims Art Workshops, designed to offer creative art therapy and vocational training to children and young women we rescue from bonded labour in India’s circuses.

She has already made a great impact with the children – many of whom have been mentally, physically and sexually abused over a sustained period of time. Here, in this report I received today, Rebecca describes her experience so far...

"When I arrived here, I had never taught before – and for those of you who haven’t either, I would like to share something with you: teaching is exhausting! I feel compelled to apologise to my teachers for any times I caused them to wish that they’d pursued a different career path. It’s not that I was a particularly troublesome pupil - in fact, I was a relatively quiet girl - but Art was the only thing I was ever really interested in, so teachers of other subjects had to work extra hard to keep my attention.

Three weeks into my 3-month placement here, I already realise how challenging teaching can be. The worst thing is that I know for a fact that as extremely privileged public school girls, we were 100% more problematic than the eager (if a little self doubting) girls I am lucky enough and honoured to be teaching.

Art is not everyone’s cup of tea and positioning myself as the teacher trying to impart my knowledge of the subject to students has certainly taught me how much I take for granted my ability to draw or form something three dimensional without much effort. It has always been that way for me, but for these girls who five months ago were more practiced on a tightrope or a unicycle, being forced to draw a still life and get to grips with the finer points of perspective and form must be totally bemusing and baffling. Especially when the person teaching them is trying to explain it in very poor pigeon Nepali!

What we put our teachers through makes me shudder to remember, and I feel an immense shame at how ungrateful we were for the education we received when I consider by comparison just how much these girls have been through, and see every day how willingly these victims of a very poor society are tackling every challenge I throw at them with a smile - and I have thrown them plenty!

I should point out at this juncture that the main reason for being here is to teach sculpture, but I strongly believe that if you can understand form and perspective by drawing it, then it will benefit everything you turn your hand to. I decided from the start that the only way to work out what they could and could not handle was to chuck them in the deep end and see if they swam.

Not really realising that most of them had never actually drawn before - every child I know grows up doodling and drawing something - I set up a complicated still life consisting of lots of fruit, mugs and a big brass water container. Knowing the culture for copying here, I made sure every angle presented a different picture and that plenty of the fruit overlapped so that they would be forced to actually look at what was in front of them instead of just drawing how they perceived it to be.

After an initial nervousness from both parties (did I mention I had never taught before?), the girls settled down to draw, only to rub out every small line they made. I decided to remove all rubbers, only to discover that a couple of them had their own and were passing them around underneath the table!

An hour into the session, I was so exhausted that I had to send them off for a 10 minute break – I was also aware that they were taking in a lot of new information. However, if by lunchtime they were paddling, then by the end of the day they were well and truly swimming and tackling the art of shading. I was exhausted but totally amazed by them.

The next morning they were horrified to discover that they had a totally new still life. I deliberately placed the girls who had excelled on a side of the table where the challenge was harder, with the task made a little simpler on the other side for the girls who had struggled. Again the girls exceeded my expectations, lapping up my instructions and advice - Nepali phrasebook in one hand and sketch pad to draw examples in the other - leaving me at the end of the day proud and humbled by their achievements and determination.

In the ensuing 2 weeks I have introduced them to relief sculpture, which they are modelling in clay and then casting in plaster. It is a serious challenge for them, and one they are proving that they are more than up to, despite not always believing it themselves! The aim of this is to help them understand 3-dimensional form but without the stresses of gravity. It also introduces them to materials, skills and methods that can be used in conjunction with mosaic and may one day be useful if commissions for bathrooms, gardens and general interiors are undertaken.

Teaching in a foreign language has challenges of its own and there are moments when I feel totally bemused by my inability to express myself. For their patience in these times, as I scrabble through my phrasebook for the closest words to explain myself, I am truly grateful.

My time here so far has been without a doubt the most humbling and rewarding of my life. The enthusiasm and determination with which the girls have battled to understand what I am trying to teach them continues to surprise me every day and I am in no doubt that they will continue to do so for the remainder of my stay. My only hope is that their patience with my lack of Nepali can match the total awe and amazement in which I hold them."

Hatti Trading

Just over three years ago we had a tremendous volunteer in Nepal called Emma Triplett. Emma had seen an interview with me in The Kathmandu Post and immediately volunteered her services to help with trafficking victims that we had retrieved from the Indian circuses. In a life changing experience she went to work at our "Kathmandu Training Centre" teaching English to girls in between their learning cutting and stitching skills. After a few months she went back to UK and decided to set up "Hatti Trading" (http://www.hattitrading.co.uk/), providing an outlet for bags and designer items that were being made by the girls she left behind in Kathmandu. Emma is a great leader and the business took off, with her selling her merchandise through party agents. The initiative is now providing work to 18 former circus girls in Kathmandu; this is what the trafficking survivors most need - jobs.

Yesterday I addressed her 25 agents and told them how they were actually in the frontline with us in the fight against human trafficking. Unless there is something for the girls to return to our circus rescue programme can fail very badly and out of sheer desperation girls may return to the circus. The talk went very well, even though my PowerPoint presentation wouldn't open and I had to present for one hour unscripted and without imagery.

There is currently an epidemic of "winter vomiting virus" sweeping the UK:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=TT1A1IOQXOAMTQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2008/01/04/nnoro604.xml

This morning at 8 a.m. I joined the victims. Explosively so.

Girl trafficker's travels over

The female trafficking agent who was sent to us by ChildLine India at the start of this week has had charges registered against her in spite of her threats against all and sundry. She is not eligible for bail so can now expect to remain behind bars for up to a year until the case comes to court. So that should keep her out of further mischief. If she is convicted she'll face a sentence of up to 20 years and a fine of up to 200,000 rupees (£1600).

We are already looking after the children of imprisoned traffickers (as part of our programme for help to prisoners' children). It would be ironic if through our determined efforts to get this woman convicted we end up caring for her children, if she has any.

Hanuman Dokha Police Station

I have spent most of today "watching the paint dry" in this central Kathmandu police station, but it has been time well spent.

On Sunday we received a call from our Indian partner, ChildLine India, that a girl trafficking agent, two other adults and three girls had been picked up by them at the railway station in the northern Indian border town of Gorakhpur. The group, all Nepalis, were on their way to Mumbai, from where the girls would be sent on to the sex trade in Kuwait. We agreed to their call for help immediately and last evening Shailaja CM, Director of our Nepal partner organisation, Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation, took a flight to the border crossing near Bhairahawa. There she linked up with the ChildLine co-workers and the trafficking party to begin a seven hour road journey home. They got back to Kathmandu at 2 a.m. The adults went straight to the jail at Hanuman Dokha Police Station while the girls went to our Godawari refuge.

It appears that the two adults in the group were a father of one of the girls and a husband of another. They were accessories to the work of the female agent, who is notorious for operating out of the southwestern Rupendehi District. She protects herself with threats of violence from the Maoists, with whom she claims to be associated. We felt that if we tried to register a case against her in her home district it would most likely fall between the floorboards as relatives - or possibly local Maoists - might intimidate the police into not pressing charges. The key would be to get the case registered in Kathmandu first (away from threats) and then transferred back to Rupendehi District for prosecution. The case would then be followed up from Kathmandu in due course. Today we seem to have been successful in our aim and the group will appear before a Kathmandu Judge tomorrow morning before being sent back to Bhairahawa.

It is actions like this that make the greatest impact against trafficking. I suspect that there are quite few major agents responsible for the trade in human lives and taking them out of circulation would turn off the flow almost overnight.

I look forward to the outcome of the hearing tomorrow. Chances are that the individuals who were due to send their beloved daughter and wife off into the sex trade will get off eventually but I can just about cope with the reality of that if the agent is put away for life.