i don't know where to start. from the beginning to the end of her speech, i had goosebumps and could not sit still. i'm not saying that watching law and order svu has trained me to see such graphic images or hear such stories. in fact, i've realized the day these images/stories stop affecting you, that's the day you become inhumane. in any case, this speech .... far, far more touching than shukla bose's. because it came from the heart. there was a story behind it. she weaved stories to faces and faces to facts ... sunitha krishnan was incredibly compelling, forthright and knew what she wanted. that, is what i believe, makes a talk that much more strong and effective. the audience wants to do something about it when you can hear the speaker's passion and experiences. watching shows that deal with sexual assault victims, battery, rape, it may hit a nerve, but the stories of children forced into such a business, the long lasting effects it has on one's life...it's so hard to imagine. yesterday, i came across a woman who had been sodomized by her alcoholic father, turned to heroin to deal with her feelings, and passed on that addiction to her daughter. its a vicious cyle. granted, at the moment, they've both been clean 15+ years, BUT only because they had the help they needed to make that change. if we listen to sunitha krishnan, we will be the change we wish to see, as gandhi said. sunithra krishnan brings the horrific truth to the forefront, that it is a modern day slave war that we need to confront. unlike gandhi, we need to not be passive about it because it is our culture of silence and ignorance that has lead to this exponential epidemic. she rightfully states that that citizens of india have ph.d.'s in victimization, and that we immediately demean them in society as fradulent without giving the irreversible consequences a second thought. though the speech/talk ended on a sad note with the passing of the victims due to HIV/AIDS, by doing so, i feel that she made such a strong point. she brought the stories of these victims into our lives, she explained the horror they experienced while living, and at age 3/4/5, the deception and force experienced by these voiceless people, are seen as use and throw. they are not respected as human beings. as in the story of the lady i met yesterday, isolation was her greatest teacher. without isolating these children from the daily traumas and ignorance that is abound, we cannot break them down to build them back up. by staying silent, we are normalizing exploitation as their destiny, and no one - NO ONE - deserves that. sunitha krishnan wanted the viewers to tell two people - just two people - about these children. and have those two people tell two other people. i've done my part by opening it up to everyone on my blog. i aim to do more work by finding some place in the community to create change. to accept them as human beings and to show them that there is hope.
day 7: TED talk – (sunitha krishnan fights sex slavery)
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunitha_krishnan_tedindia.html
i work on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation. and i tell you stories from there. my own journey to work with these children started as a teenager. i was 15 when i was gang-raped by eight men. i don't remember the rape part of it so much as much as the anger part of it. yes, there were eight men who defiled me, raped me, but that didn't go into my consciousness. i never felt like a victim, then or now. but what lingered from then till now -- i am 40 today -- is this huge outrageous anger.
two years, i was ostracized, i was stigmatized, i was isolated, because i was a victim. and that's what we do to all traffic survivors. we, as a society, we have phds in victimizing a victim. right from the age of 15, when i started looking around me, i started seeing hundreds and thousands of women and children who are left in sexual slavery-like practices, but have absolutely no respite, because we don't allow them to come in.
where does their journey begin? most of them come from very optionalist families, not just poor. you have even the middle class sometimes getting trafficked. i had this i.s. officer's daughter, who is 14 years old, studying in ninth standard, who was raped chatting with one individual, and ran away from home because she wanted to become a heroine, who was trafficked. i have hundreds and thousands of stories of very very well-to-do families, and children from well-to-do families, who are getting trafficked.
these people are deceived, forced. 99.9 percent of them resist being inducted into prostitution. some pay the price for it. they're killed; we don't even hear about them. they are voiceless, [unclear], nameless people. but the rest, who succumb into it, go through everyday torture. because the men who come to them are not men who want to make you your girlfriends, or who want to have a family with you. these are men who buy you for an hour, for a day, and use you, throw you.
each of the girls that i have rescued -- i have rescued more than 3,200 girls -- each of them tell me one story in common ... one story about one man, at least, putting chile powder in her vagina, one man taking a cigarette and burning her, one man whipping her. we are living among those men: they're our brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, all around us. and we are silent about them.
we think it is easy money. we think it is shortcut. we think the person likes to do what she's doing. but the extra bonuses that she gets is various infections, sexually transmitted infections, hiv, aids, syphilis, gonorrhea, you name it, substance abuse, drugs, everything under the sun. and one day she gives up on you and me, because we have no options for her. and therefore she starts normalizing this exploitation. she believes, "yes, this is it, this is what my destiny is about." and this is normal, to get raped by 100 men a day. and it's abnormal to live in a shelter. it's abnormal to get rehabilitated.
it's in that context that i work. it's in that context that i rescue children. i've rescued children as young as three years, and i've rescued women as old as 40 years. when i rescued them, one of the biggest challenges i had was where do i begin. because i had lots of them who were already hiv infected. one third of the people i rescue are hiv positive. and therefore my challenge was to understand how can i get out the power from this pain. and for me, i was my greatest experience. understanding my own self, understanding my own pain, my own isolation, was my greatest teacher. because what we did with these girls is to understand their potential.
we have trained girls as carpenters, as masons, as security guards, as cab drivers. and each one of them are excelling in their chosen field, gaining confidence, restoring dignity, and building hopes in their own lives. these girls are also working in big construction companies like ram-ki construction, as masons, full-time masons.
what has been my challenge? my challenge has not been the traffickers who beat me up. i've been beaten up more than 14 times in my life. i can't hear from my right ear. i've lost a staff of mine who was murdered while on a rescue. my biggest challenge is society. it's you and me. my biggest challenge is your blocks to accept these victims as our own.
a very supportive friend of mine, a well-wisher of mine, used to give me every month, 2,000 rupees for vegetables. when her mother fell sick she said, "sunitha, you have so much of contacts. can you get somebody in my house to work, so that she can look after my mother?" and there is a long pause. and then she says, "not one of our girls."
it's very fashionable to talk about human trafficking, in this fantastic a-c hall. it's very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. but it is not nice to bring them to our homes. it's not nice to give them employment in our factories, our companies. it's not nice for our children to study with their children. there it ends. that's my biggest challenge.
if i'm here today, i'm here not only as sunitha krishnan. i'm here as a voice of the victims and survivors of human trafficking. they need your compassion. they need your empathy. they need, much more than anything else, your acceptance.
many times when i talk to people, i keep telling them one thing: don't tell me hundred ways how you can not respond to this problem. can you ply your mind for that one way that you can respond to the problem? and that's what i'm here for, asking for your support, demanding for your support, requesting for your support. can you break your culture of silence? can you speak to at least two persons about this story? tell them this story. convince them to tell the story to another two persons.
i'm not asking you all to become mahatma gandhis or martin luther kings, or medha patkars, or something like that. i'm asking you, in your limited world, can you open your minds? can you open your hearts? can you just encompass these people too? because they are also a part of us. they are also part of this world. i'm asking you, for these children, whose faces you see, they're no more. they died of aids last year. i'm asking you to help them, accept as human beings, not as philanthropy, not as charity, but as human beings who deserve all our support. i'm asking you this because no child, no human being, deserves what these children have gone through.
day 6: Wikipedia article – (sir richard williams)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Williams_%28RAAF_officer%29
Widely regarded as the "father" of the royal australian air force (raaf). he was the first military pilot trained in australia, and went on to command australian and british fighter units in world war i. a proponent for air power independent of other branches of the armed services, williams played a leading role in the establishment of the raaf and became its first chief of the air staff (cas) in 1922. he served as cas for thirteen years over three terms, longer than any other officer. he took up the position of director-general of civil aviation in australia, and was knighted the year before his retirement in 1955.
<3
No comments:
Post a Comment