“Living Death” is a long term personal project about forced underage sex trade in Kandapara, the largest brothel in Tangail, a northeastern city of Bangladesh. For the past two years, I have been documenting the daily life of these underage sex slaves in this brothel.  With this project, I aim to draw people’s attention to the unfortunate, shameful fact that underage girls are regularly abducted and supplied to the owners of brothels, who force these minors into selling their bodies and souls. This is a reality that happens every day, and these girls’ humanity is under siege.

 

The root of this work goes back to a time when at the age of 17, in my hometown Dhaka in Bangladesh, I learned that, a 12 year old girl was kidnapped on her way back from school. Her disappearance was often discussed in my family, she was someone we knew. After trying to trace her for a year and half, her parents forced themselves to believe and come to terms with the fact that she was no no longer alive. It was at this point that someone informed them that she was found in a brothel. By then, they tried to bring her back home, but she did not want to come back; and after a year or so, the girl committed suicide.

 

Approximately 850 sex-workers live here. Around 40 percent of them are under age. Most of these young girls were abducted and sold here for around 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka. These young girls know little about what they might have to encounter. Their job is to please customers like rickshaw-pullers, drivers, policemen and businessmen to name a few. Some of the girls choose to embrace death to escape from their fate. And for those who survive, they cannot ever go back to their families or lead a normal life. In most cases, they would not be accepted even by their own family, let alone the society. For the families, these girls are dead, if they ever get to know what has become of them. They become the ‘living-deads’.

The newcomers are beaten and made to starve until they give in, mentally and physically. They are often ‘examined’ by a law enforcement officer, once they get the licence to work as an adult sex-worker. The ‘Queen Bee’ of the house, the ‘madam’ subjects the girl to terrible physical experiences if she is not fit to please her clients. The girls are given Oradexon by the Brothel owners. It is a steroid drug which helps the body to develop fat easily, to make them look older than their actual age to attract customers. Also, getting a fake age proof for the girls is ot difficult for the owners. A teenage girl is transformed into an ‘adult’ on papers, for less than 15000 Bangladeshi Taka. Sometimes these teenage girls get pregnant only to abort the unwanted children. Drugs, unprotected sex and sexual abuses make their life more than miserable.