Guest guest Posted September 26, 2002 Report Share Posted September 26, 2002 Dimapur sex workers in disarray Dimapur is one of the fastest growing cities in India having a density of 333 persons per square kilometer. Being a commercial metropolis bordering Assam and accessible by road/rail/air, it can rightly be called the gateway to Nagaland. Business being an attractive activity of the area, especially of smuggled goods hordes of businessmen throngs the area eyeing prospective customers. Added to this, large battalion of peace keeping personnel surrounds the area; besides, being a transit point for army personnel located at other places of Northeast. This puts the region in a highly mobile zone. Consequently, the demand for sex work is more as in any other highly mobile areas. Latest estimates put the number of sex workers in Dimapur town as 532, excluding flying girls and call girls. Local (Naga) sex workers are a few in numbers compared to non-local sex workers (mainly from neighboring states, Nepal and Bangladesh). The area of operation is confined to specific locations, though not declared officially as red-light areas. Hotel based sex work is more safe as the authorities connive with law enforcing personnel to inflict ‘less harm’ to them. Since HIV/AIDS intervention among them was facilitated by State AIDS control society and Oxfam a few years back, condom use among them has risen exponentially (fall in new cases of STD and high turn over of condoms as indicators) and they are able to negotiate with their customers on condom use. However, the Goondas and underground cohorts do occasional harm to them by not paying for sex, not using condoms and even manhandling them if they oppose. Since the area is not considered as a red-light zone officially, the sex workers remain unorganized and human rights violations never come to the open. What pester the sex workers now are the frequent raids conducted by newly constituted women police wing. This forces them to shift bases and some works on the streets, clandestinely. This affects the ongoing intervention programme where advocacy often fails to bring in desired results owing to the high handedness of police personnel. Now, the sex workers and the facilitators of intervention programmes among them demands the declaration of some areas as red light zones officially. The proponents of this idea see this as an important step to empower them, an enabling environment to arrest the spread of HIV that is already high in the state and to advocate for human rights among sex workers. (Based on the experience of Prodigals’ Home – an NGO working in the field of health and development: Compiled by Premjith P) E-mail: <premjith2000@...> __________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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