Population, Gender, and Disparity - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 78

Hydrochloric or sulphuric acid is the weapon of
choice because it is commonly used as a household
cleaner; it is available and cheap. Acid is usually aimed at
the face although it often is poured over the whole body .
It eats away skin and even dissolves bones. Victims suffer
terribly and are horribly scarred for life.
It must be pointed out that not all victims are
women. Class conflicts, property disputes, and other
disagreements may drive men to attack other men.
However, 80 percent of known attacks are against
women and 40 percent of these are against girls under
the age of 18.
As of 2009, there are many reliable reports of acid
attacks increasing dramatically in India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Nepal, and Cambodia. If you go online and
look up “acid attacks in Asia,” you will find stories
about survivors who now devote their lives to helping
other victims.
Millions of women and children under 18 slave as
prostitutes in Asia. Roughly 60,000 girls offer sex serv-
ices in the Philippines. Thailand has as many as
800,000 children working in the “sex industry ,” and it
is estimated that 10,000 girls are bought from Myan-
mar each year to replace those overworked, diseased,
or dead. In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a six-year-old can
be acquired for as little as three dollars. As many as
50,000 Nepalese girls work as prostitutes in India.
Prostitutes are deemed essential for indigenous males.
Mores in several countries restrict sexual behavior for
females but not for males. Millions of men work away
from their homes for weeks or months at a time, and
prostitutes are seen as contributing to their well-being.
Since local women are not readily available, imports
are required.
Human trafficking of girls within and between coun-
tries for purposes of sex is a worldwide phenomenon.
Countless millions of girls as young as six or eight years old
are lured, kidnapped, sold, coerced, or otherwise forced into
prostitution. In Asia, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia,
Nepal, and the Philippines are notorious source regions.
“Labor agents” recruit girls from poor regions by
paying their parents a lump sum that then becomes a
debt. Parents are assured that their daughters will be
taken to work for a rich family , send money home, and
attend school. In the face of abject poverty , this is seen as
a blessing. In fact, the girl will be detained in debt
bondage—forced to work in a brothel to pay her “debt”
plus the cost of food and clothing.
In India, labor agents scour the region for children
of the impoverished. Nepal is a virtual gold mine in this

regard. There is also a tradition of declaring one' is
daughter a devadasi, or Hindu temple servant. Dedi-
cated to a particular goddess, a devadasi participated in
ritual singing, dancing, and other religious practices.
However, tradition has been corrupted, and today many
of these girls are forced into prostitution by the un-
scrupulous. The practice has been outlawed, yet it still
accounts for at least 20 percent of prostitution in India.
For example, there are an estimated 50,000 Nepali girls,
mostly between the ages of 10 and 14, working in In-
dian brothels.
Girls are usually raped and beaten into submission
by brothel owners. Very often they are forcibly turned
into heroin or methamphetamine addicts. Girls “serve”
customers for 12 hours a day , 7 days a week. They are
rarely allowed out and are often chained to their cots.
Police seldom do anything since they are bribed and of-
ten use the brothels themselves. Moreover, authorities
frequently look upon the girls as less than human be-
cause they are usually from the poorest and lowest
classes of society . Further, many believe that if men use
prostitutes, “their own” women will be protected and
remain pure/virginal for their inevitable arranged
marriages. (Figure 3-7)
The story of Srey Rath of Cambodia illustrates what
happens to so many young girls in Asia. This account is
drawn from a must-read book recently penned by two
Pulitzer Prize-winning authors: Nicholas Kristof and
Sheryl Wudunn ( Half the Sky: T Turning Oppression into
Opportunity for W omen W orldwid . New Y ork: Knopf,2009).

The Saga of Srey Rath

When Rath was 15 her family ran out of money so
she decided to get a job in Thailand as a dish-
washer. A “job agent” offered her a job in a restau-
rant but took her deep into the Thai interior and
handed her over to gangsters in Malaysia, where
she was taken to a karaoke lounge that doubled as a
brothel in Kuala Lumpur. “The boss” told Rath that
she owed him money for her journey . He put her
into a room with a man who tried to force her to
have sex. She fought him off but when the enraged
man complained to the boss, he and the other gang-
sters raped her, beat her, and threatened her with
death. She was forced to take pills and soon became
addicted. Constant batterings eventually forced her
to smile for her customers. She was never allowed