Mumbai's sex slaves: 'I have had bad dreams about the life these girls lead'
28 Sep 2013:
Hazel Thompson, a photographer from Surrey, explains why she spent 11 years documenting the city's red light district
Hazel Thompson, a photographer from Surrey, explains why she spent 11 years documenting the city's red light district
Kamathipura, Mumbai, is one of the largest red light districts in Asia. Photograph: Hazel Thompson
Photographer Hazel Thompson, 35, has spent a large part of the
last 11 years in Mumbai learning about, and living with, the sex slaves
who are held captive, often in cages, in the maze of backstreets known
collectively as "the lanes" in Kamathipura, the city's oldest and
biggest red-light district.
The plight of the trafficked children that Thompson has watched growing up has drawn her closer to the women than she could have predicted. It has changed her into a determined campaigner, instead of a journalist working at an emotional distance. Some of the girls whose lives she has charted are still living in the lanes as enslaved prostitutes. A few others have been rescued and have prospered, sometimes working with the charities that helped them.
Next month Thompson's extensive and shocking chronicle of life in these lanes, Taken, is to be published as an ebook, allowing readers to understand the reality of a grim trade that dates back to the colonial era.
"A few months ago, when a lot of the work on the book was already done, someone handed me a book called The Queen's Daughters, about two American missionaries in the Victorian era who uncovered the Bombay sex trade that had been set up for the British army," said Thompson, who first went out to Mumbai with the British charity Jubilee Campaign and has worked with the support of several fixers and researchers. "I found I have been following in the footsteps of these women and that much of the language used by the girls to tell their stories is still used today."
In 1888 the British parliament ruled that organised prostitution inside designated "comfort zones" should end in India, yet four years later the two missionaries, Elizabeth Andrew and Kathleen Bushnell, were able to report back that military-run brothels were not only still functioning, but around half the girls kept there were aged between 14 and 16.
Just as girls are still rounded up today and taken from their families, sometimes in exchange for money, in the days of empire a commanding officer would order his quartermaster to "go into the villages and take from the homes of these poor people their daughters". The colonel would make the final selection and the girls were then licensed and checked by a doctor.
"My work in the lanes became even more important to me after reading this, since it seems we caused the problem out there. It is a legacy of British rule that needs to change," said Thompson, the daughter of a teacher and an accountant – someone who enjoyed what she describes as the ultimate middle-class childhood in Surrey.
"It has affected me like no other story. I have bad dreams about the life these girls lead. It is your brain's way of getting it out of your system," she said.
Thompson's chief concern now has been to ensure that the publication of the ebook next month does not impact on the people who have helped her and who often live in fear of the rival gangs that dominate each different lane.
"I feel I have family out there now; that sort of level of trust was needed and so I feel a lot of responsibility. I am making sure that everyone is OK and that they know when the book is coming out. I don't want to harm anyone, I want to bring about change. And the people I work with out there have encouraged me and tell me they need international stories to help pressurise the Indian government to tackle this properly."
The plight of the trafficked children that Thompson has watched growing up has drawn her closer to the women than she could have predicted. It has changed her into a determined campaigner, instead of a journalist working at an emotional distance. Some of the girls whose lives she has charted are still living in the lanes as enslaved prostitutes. A few others have been rescued and have prospered, sometimes working with the charities that helped them.
Next month Thompson's extensive and shocking chronicle of life in these lanes, Taken, is to be published as an ebook, allowing readers to understand the reality of a grim trade that dates back to the colonial era.
"A few months ago, when a lot of the work on the book was already done, someone handed me a book called The Queen's Daughters, about two American missionaries in the Victorian era who uncovered the Bombay sex trade that had been set up for the British army," said Thompson, who first went out to Mumbai with the British charity Jubilee Campaign and has worked with the support of several fixers and researchers. "I found I have been following in the footsteps of these women and that much of the language used by the girls to tell their stories is still used today."
In 1888 the British parliament ruled that organised prostitution inside designated "comfort zones" should end in India, yet four years later the two missionaries, Elizabeth Andrew and Kathleen Bushnell, were able to report back that military-run brothels were not only still functioning, but around half the girls kept there were aged between 14 and 16.
Just as girls are still rounded up today and taken from their families, sometimes in exchange for money, in the days of empire a commanding officer would order his quartermaster to "go into the villages and take from the homes of these poor people their daughters". The colonel would make the final selection and the girls were then licensed and checked by a doctor.
"My work in the lanes became even more important to me after reading this, since it seems we caused the problem out there. It is a legacy of British rule that needs to change," said Thompson, the daughter of a teacher and an accountant – someone who enjoyed what she describes as the ultimate middle-class childhood in Surrey.
"It has affected me like no other story. I have bad dreams about the life these girls lead. It is your brain's way of getting it out of your system," she said.
Thompson's chief concern now has been to ensure that the publication of the ebook next month does not impact on the people who have helped her and who often live in fear of the rival gangs that dominate each different lane.
"I feel I have family out there now; that sort of level of trust was needed and so I feel a lot of responsibility. I am making sure that everyone is OK and that they know when the book is coming out. I don't want to harm anyone, I want to bring about change. And the people I work with out there have encouraged me and tell me they need international stories to help pressurise the Indian government to tackle this properly."
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