Zunera once dreamed of becoming a computer engineer, but instead the bright-eyed 16-year-old Pakistani was tricked into a life of forced prostitution in the United Arab Emirates, beginning a four-year-long nightmare of cruelty, violence and rape.
Pakistan has long been an important source of cheap labor for the Gulf state, particularly for its booming construction sector, but campaigners and officials say hundreds of young Pakistani women are also trafficked every year to supply the thriving sex trade in the brothels and nightclubs of Dubai. Zunera and her sister, Shaista, were two of them.
More than a year after she escaped, Zunera’s pain is still etched into her stumbling, hesitant voice and also on her body, which bears the marks of countless beatings.
Photo: AFP
Vivid, angry scars run the length of her legs from ankle to hip, the souvenirs of a botched operation after she was shot three times by the gang who trafficked her.
Zunera and Shaista managed to escape their tormentors last year, but still live in hiding in a two-room house in a slum, fearing revenge attacks. Their full names and precise whereabouts are being withheld for their safety.
The sisters’ ordeal began in their hometown in Punjab Province, when their family got into financial trouble and a neighbor named Ayesha offered the sisters domestic work.
After a while, Ayesha suggested that the sisters come with her to Dubai to work in her beauty parlor, getting fake papers to help the underage Zunera leave Pakistan.
Shaista is so traumatized by her experiences she can barely recount her harrowing ordeal and Zunera fights back tears as she revealed the horror that awaited them at Dubai.
“Ayesha took us to the lavatories at the airport and told us that we will be serving her clients for sex,” Zunera told reporters. “We started crying and then she told us that we traveled on fake documents and if we said anything we would be handed over to police right there.”
Faced with no alternative, the sisters went with Ayesha, thinking that they could just avoid having sex with clients.
“The first time, she herself was present in the room and made us do what the clients wanted. We were raped in front of her and with her assistance,” Zunera said.
After that, Ayesha told the clients to keep their cellphones connected to her number during the intercourse so she could hear what was happening — and if the sisters were refusing to cooperate.
“She used to torture us whenever we refused to perform certain sexual acts and she told us that she knew whatever had happened inside the bedroom,” Zunera said.
The women were not allowed to go out or even speak to one another freely. They could speak to their family in Pakistan by phone occasionally, but under duress.
“She used to beat one of us and ask the other sister to talk on phone to our parents, threatening to kill us if we revealed anything about the brothel,” Zunera recalled.
From time to time, Ayesha brought the sisters back to Pakistan to renew their visas, frightening them into silence by telling them she would kill their whole families if they revealed the life they had been tricked into.
In March last year, the sisters finally plucked up the courage to share their ordeal to their elder sister, Qamar, who eventually obtained their freedom — but at a cost.
“The brother of Ayesha and the younger brother of her husband came to our house. They fired three shots which hit me,” Zunera said. “In hospital, she sent policemen who harassed me and asked me to start walking despite the fact that my leg had undergone surgery.”
The family fled from the hospital and went into hiding because their neighbors had also started abusing them for being “prostitutes.”
Zunera’s family approached a court to try to crack trafficking ring run by Ayesha and her husband, Ashfaq. The court ordered the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to act, but the case has since made little progress.
Lawyer Zulfiqar Ali Bhutta, who is fighting Zunera’s case, says the trafficking gangs often have influential connections to politicians and the police.
“Several gangs smuggle dozens of young girls from Pakistan to Dubai for prostitution every week. Nobody takes action against them,” Bhutta said. “The main accused in this case, Ashfaq, fled from the court in front of FIA officials. They did not arrest him despite the court cancelling his bail.”
A recent US Department of State report on people smuggling said the United Arab Emirates government was making significant efforts to tackle sex trafficking, pointing to prosecutions and protection offered to victims.
Last year, the US report said Abu Dhabi identified 40 victims and referred them to state-funded shelters, but if the authorities there are keen to confront the problem, in Pakistan indifference reigns.
“It is true that hundreds of girls are being taken to Dubai for work in beauty parlors, in music and dance troupes, but there is no proof that any of them has been smuggled for prostitution,” said Syed Shahid Hassan, deputy director of the agency’s Faisalabad branch.
While Zunera and Shaista’s ordeal has abated, it has not ended, as Ayesha has surrendered to a court, but been freed on bail. The sisters now live in constant fear that a gunman will come back for them.
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