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.
END OF THE SPEECH
Link to the speech of Sunitha Krishnan on TED TALK;
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunitha_krishnan_tedindia.html
Other links;
http://sunithakrishnan.blogspot.in/
http://www.prajwalaindia.com/home.html
