Kathmandu (AsiaNews) - The new policy of open borders between Kathmandu and Beijing, aimed at promoting trade and the movement of people between the two countries, "has exacerbated the problem of human trafficking," which particularly affects women in Nepal. This is the complaint of activist Anuradha Koirala, president and founder of Maiti Nepal, an organization that fights for human rights and winner of the 2012 CNN-Hero Award. Girls of different ages are increasingly trapped in prostitution or sold as brides to Chinese men for money, a phenomenon exacerbated by the aberrant one-child policy desired by the Chinese Communist authorities, which led to a progressive decrease of the local female population.
The Nepalese NGO confirms that, in recent months, at least 56 women in Nepal have been torn to from the hands of their traffickers, but hundreds of others still remain in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers, abusers or men who exploit them for money in the Chinese territory .
There is also another association in defense of women, the Santi Punarsthapana Griha - House for a return to peace - that the young women are (in some cases) sold for money by their own families of origin, to end up in restaurants, night clubs hotel, along the border area of Khasa. "Given that the Nepali women do not understand Chinese - added the activist Koirala - men have a brutal behavior towards them, only to wildly beat them if they do not obey."
According to the latest estimates the trade in human lives has doubled in just one year, the two organizations have saved at least 150 women from slavery. Of these, at least six were working in bars and sex shops, 20 in restaurants, 10 in hotels, 20 others scattered in various areas of the red light districts that proliferate along the Sino-Nepalese border. "Most of the women - said the president of Maiti Nepal - get a permit to cross the border for a day, but they rarely return. Traffickers move them every two or three months to different places to avoid them being found out."
