LITERARY CRITICISM:FREE NOTES: 00473--Sunitha Krishnan's Speech / TED TALK/ Transcription

00473--Sunitha Krishnan's Speech / TED TALK/ Transcription

Sunitha Krishnan's Speech / TED TALKS

I have been listening to TED TALKS for a while now, and I have come across a number of inspiring, courageous, jaw dropping, persuasive, ingenious, fascinating, beautiful, informative and funny talks. I would wonder, laugh, ponder over along with the speakers. But when Sunitha Krishnan spoke it was different. It was a moving speech. In her talk she asked the audience to do whatever they can to spread the story she told. I wanted to do something. I have a blog (this very blog) which is visited by at least 700 people every day. So I thought it would be a good idea to write a post here on Sunitha Krishnan's speech, and to post the transcription of her speech. I don't want to give any comment on her speech because it speaks for itself. I have posted the full speech here. A link to her speech [video] is given at the end of this post. Links to her blog and website are also given. Be a part of her mission.

Now the speech...

I am talking to you about the worst form of human rights violation, the third largest organized crime, a 10 billion dollar industry. I am talking to you about a modern day slavery.

Like to tell you the story of these three children; Pranitha, Shaheen and Anjali. Pranitha's mother was a woman in prostitution. A prostituted person. She got infected with HIV. And towards the end of her life when she was in the final stages of AIDS she could not prostitute. So she sold four year old Pranitha to a broker. By the time we got the information, we reached there, Pranitha was already raped by three men.

Shaheen's background I don't even know. We found her in a railway track raped by many, many men. I do not know how many. But the indications of that on her body was that her intestine was outside her body. And when we took her to the hospital she needed thirty two stitches to put back her intestine to her body. We still don't know who her parents are, who she is. All that we know is that hundreds of men had used her brutally.

Anjali's father, a drunkard, sold his child for pornography.

You are seeing here images of 3 years, 4 year old and five year old children who have been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. In this country and across the glob hundreds and thousands of children as young as three, as young as four are sold into sexual slavery. But that is not the only purpose that human beings are sold for. They are sold in the name of adoption. They are sold in the name of organ trade. They are sold in the name of forced labour, camel jockeying...anything and everything.

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 fifteen when I was gang raped by 8 men. I don't remember the rape part of it so much as much as the anger part of it. Yes, there were eight, one who defiled me, raped me, but that didn't go into my conscious. I never felt like a victim then or now. But what lingered from then to now, I'm 40 today, is this huge outrageous anger. Two years I was ostracised, I was stigmatised, I was isolated... because I was a victim. And that's what we do to all traffic survivors. We as a civil society, we have PhDs in victimising a victim.

Right from the age of fifteen 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 option-less[?] families. Not just poor. You have even the middle class sometimes getting trafficked. I had this IAS officer's daughter who was fourteen years old, studying in ninth standard, who was web chatting with one individual and ran away from home because she wanted to become a heroine, who was trafficked. I've hundreds and thousands of stories of children from well-to-do families who are getting trafficked.

These people are deceived, forced...99.9 percent of them resists being inducted into prostitution. Some pay the price for it. They are killed. we don't even hear about them. They are voiceless Anamikas. Nameless people. But the rest who succumb into it go through every day torture. Because the men who come to them are not men who want to make you their girlfriends or want to make a family with you. These are men who buy you for an hour...for a day...use you...throw you.

Each of the girls that I have rescued, I have rescued more than three thousand two hundred girls, each of them tells me one story in common. One story about one man at least putting chilly powder in her vagina, one man taking a cigarette and burning her, one man whipping her. We are living among those men. There are brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins all around us. And we are silent about them. We think it is easy money. We think it is short cut. We think the person likes to do what she is doing. But the extra bonuses she gets are various infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV AIDS,syphilis, gonorrhoea, you name it, substance abuse, drugs... everything under the sun.

And one day she gives upon 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 hundred men a day. And it is abnormal to live in a shelter. It is abnormal to get rehabilitated. It is in that context that I work. It is in that context that I rescue children. I have rescued children as young as three years. And I have rescued women as old as 40 years.

When I rescued them what were the biggest challenges I had? Where do I begin? Because I had lots of them who are 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.

You see a girl here who is trained as a welder. She works for a very big company, a workshop in Hyderabad, making furniture. she earns around 12,000 rupees. She is an illiterate girl. Trained, skilled as a welder. Why welding and why not computers? We felt that one of the things that these girls had is immense amount of courage. They did not have any purdahs inside their body, hijabs inside themselves.

They have crossed the barrier of it.

And therefore they could fight in a male dominated world very easily...and not feel very shy about it. We have trained girls as carpenters, as masons, as security guards, as cab drivers. And each one of them is 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 "Ramky Constructions" as masons, full time masons.

What has been my challenge? My challenge has not been the traffickers who beat me up. I have been beaten up more than fourteen 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 the civil society. It's you and me. My biggest challenge is your block 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 says, '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 is very fashionable to talk about human trafficking in this fantastic AC hall. It is very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. But it is not nice to bring them to our homes. It is 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 am here today I am here not only as Sunitha Krishnan. I am here as a voice of the victims, the survivors of the human trafficking. They need your compassion. They need your empathy. They need, much more than anything, your acceptance.

Many times when I talk to people I keep telling them one thing; Don't tell me hundred ways how you cannot respond to this problem. Can you apply your mind for that one way that you can respond to the problem?

And that's what I am here for. Asking for your support. Demanding your support. Requesting your support. Can you break your culture of silence? Can you speak to at least two persons about this story? Tell them the story. Convince them to tell the story to another two persons.

I am not asking you all to become Mahathma Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings or Medha Patkars or something like that. I am 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 a part of this world.

I am asking you for these children whose faces you see...they are no more. They died of AIDS last year. I am 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 am asking you this...because no child, no human being deserves what these children have gone through. Thank you.