Diary of a trafficked Dalit girl who died of HIV/AIDS
- Rupesh Silwal
Sani Pariyar was born into a so-called lower-caste Nepalese family, and faced atrocities of untouchability. Like majority of the Dalits population, poverty and untimely family responsibilities led to her being trafficked, or ensnared into white slavery. After a few years of victimization in India, she never knew the reason as to why her pimp allowed her to return in Nepal.
It became known only after a few months of medical treatment, when she was discovered to be infected by HIV/AIDS. A young woman, once trafficked, is not expected to resettle in her birthplace. It was an unacceptable moral and social stain for a Dalit girl to do so. Sani accordingly started her newest career in one of the rehabilitation centers in Nepal. Her goal of a social service career came to an end when she died of the disease, leaving us with nothing more than heart-rending, poetic words from her diary.
“Now it’s night and obviously there is morning the next day.
Now is tragedy and obviously there is unification one day
Be as stable as an ocean or as aggressive as turbulence
Entire world is selfish and be aware in every step
Life is a flower and it has to dry down
Your love is just a dream but one day you will betray
No need of jewelry but just pour love for me
Nothing more of loves but give your support to me.”
In her diary she defined the grief and pain of her suffering as a 9-year old .
“Where would I start to write the story of my life?
When I was very young, my mother left my brother and me alone. At that time, I was just 9 years old. My father often drank alcohol and used to torture us every day. He used to beat us. My father did not feed us. My younger brother always used to shout at me, asking for food. My sweet brother used to cry for hunger. At the age of 9, I had no idea where to get food to kill the hunger. Harassed and helpless, I always cried together with my brother. Without any other choice, I started to beg and became a beggar.
There was no solace in this for an untouchable (so called). Others started to scold me, and I even got beaten up for begging. With the passage of time, I reached 17 years of age and was capable of physical labor to earn some money. In the meantime, my father introduced our stepmother, who would never care for us (Sani and her brother). She never valued my toughest struggles either. Thereafter, I quit my family and village. It has been three years now.”
“I do not know what my sweet brother is doing right now. I do not know what he might have eaten. Finally, I am working in a rehabilitation center (Maiti Nepal). Now I have seen a beam of bright hope for the future. My future will be so bright, but here is none to share my feelings. Hence, I tell my story of my life to myself. I hear myself and get contented with myself!”
Sani seemed sentimental towards life and the dictates of her heart.
“Wherefrom shall I start to define the life
Is that from birth or from the death shall I start
From smile or start from tears
Finally, wherefrom shall I start to define the life.”
“As at the date, never meant to betray you
As at the date, I never meant your life a toy
Remembrances make even sky nearer
If trying to forget, own courtyard is farthest
Learn to pluck flowers without breaking the branches
Learn to love without breaking the heart
Who feeds the avian flying in the sky?
Who shelters to the one unlucky like me?”
Sani wrote in her diary about the end days and unmet
desires.
“My name is Sani. These days I feel confused. My mind is restless. I am getting lonely. I have no hope to live. I am infected with deadly disease, but I want to live more and want to serve others, but the ’situation’ is unfavorable to me. Bye-bye for today.”
An end to caste-based dicrimination and trafficking of vulnerable future Sanis would be a true tribute to her.
Sani Pariyar died a year ago.
*
Facing the Challenges of HIV/AIDS
Around the world, more than 47 million people are now infected with the HIV/AIDS, It is now a weapon of mankind destruction. It has killed more than 30 million people worldwide according to UNAID and WHO reports since the 1st of December 1981 when it was first recognized. This makes it the worst recorded pandemic in the history of pandemics against mankind. In 2006 alone, it was reported to have killed between 2.5 to 3.5 million people with more than 380000 as children. The large number of these people killed is from the sub Saharan Africa. In some Sub-Saharan African countries, HIV/AIDS is expected to lower life expectancy by as much as 25 years.
AIDS is no longer a problem of medication. It is a problem of development. It is not just an individual hardship. It also threatens to decimate the future prospects of poor countries, wiping away years of hard-won improvements in development indicators. As a result of the disease, many poor countries are witnessing a worsening in child survival rates, reduced life expectancy, crumbling and over-burdened health care systems, the breakdown of family structures and the decimation of a generation in the prime of their working lives.
Bangladesh’s socio-economic status, traditional social ills, cultural myths on sex and sexuality and a huge population of marginalised people make it extremely vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Everyone buying sex in Bangladesh is having unprotected sex some of the time, and a large majority don’t use condoms most of the time. Behaviors that bring the highest risk of infection in Bangladesh are unprotected sex between sex workers and their clients, needle sharing and unprotected sex between men.
Though the country overall has a low prevalence rate, it has reported concentrated epidemics among vulnerable population such as IDUs. There are already localized epidemics within vulnerable groups in, and the virus would spread among the IDUs’ family or sexual partner. According to the social development specialist and AIDS researcher Mohammad Khairul Alam, “It should be realized that there is no alternative to develop and enhance life skills of vulnerable girls and women to cope with epidemic. They may be assisted on the various levels to become engaged in grooming their confidence and organized. At the same time, their voices should be allowed to be heard loud and clear. Thus the collective effort of women is born with the sense or purpose that they will be stirred up to share perceptions improving their access to reproductive health related information and services.”
In many poor countries, commercial female sex workers are frequently exposed to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs/STDs). Where sex workers have poor access to health care and HIV prevention services, HIV prevalence can be as high as 50-90%. Evidence shows that targeted prevention interventions in sex work settings can turn the pandemic around.
Bangladesh is a high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, particularly among commercial sex workers; there are available injection drug users and sex workers all over the country, low condom use in the general population. Considering the high prevalence of HIV risk factors among the Bangladeshi population, HIV prevention research is particularly important for Bangladesh. It is very awful, several organization in Bangladesh are working only to prevent HIV/AIDS but few of them like as ‘Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation’ try to develop proper strategic plane, so should increase research based organization recently.
Poverty in Bangladesh is a deeply entrenched and complex phenomenon. Sequentially, the HIV/AIDS epidemic amplifies and become deeper poverty by its serious economic impact on individuals, households and different sectors of the economy. Poverty is the reason why messages of prevention and control do not make an impact on a vast majority of the vulnerable population.
Sources: World Bank, UNAIDS, UNICEF.
Kh. Zahir Hossain
M & E Specialist (BWSPP)
The World Bank
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Mobile: 01711453171
Zahir.hossain@gmail.com
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