The false promise of paradise

Driven by desperation, many poor girls end up in a life of exploitation at the hands of Chinese nationals

LAHORE: “I thought no one could ever fool me,” said N*, a minor girl who used to beg for a living outside Lahore’s iconic Data Darbar shrine. “But I was made a fool even though I have fooled others all my life.”

N, like anyone else forced to beg just to get by, dreamed of a life far removed from the crippling poverty she was condemned to by birth. Desperation, however, drove her down a path she now wishes every day she had not taken.

“I would rather beg for the rest of my life then spend my days here. No luxury or paradise is worth this ordeal,” she said.

The Express Tribune found N at a bungalow in one of Lahore’s upscale neighbourhoods. There, she was housed with some other similarly poor minor girls.

She and the other girls also shared the space with 10 Chinese men, who treated them as nothing more than sexual objects to share among themselves and with other men.

All of the girls were lured to the house by the same woman using the same offer.

“She offered us a chance… a dream of a better life far away from hardship,” said N. “All we had to do, she told us, was marry a Chinese national and soon we would be living a life of luxury in China.”



A dream of paradise, a vision of hell

As daunting as the idea of moving to a foreign land with a language she could not comprehend was, N and the other girls though it would be worth it if at last they would not be poor anymore. Driven by the dream of a life without hardship, she and other girls consented to moving to the bungalow they now reside in.

“We were told our stay here would be temporary,” N said. “We were told we would only have to wait a few months. That once our nikahs with our Chinese husbands were solemnised, we would be in China in no time.”

“We believed her because we saw her treat other beggars like a mother treats her child. We thought she would always look out for her,” N added.

As the months piled on, for N at least, her dream of a better life turned into despair. “I learnt from the woman who brought me here that I had been bought by one of the Chinese men. She did not say for how much,” she said.

“All this time and even now, this house is a prison for us girls. We are only allowed to move from one room to another. We cannot move freely,” she added. “I cannot live like this.”

When The Express Tribune visited the house a second time, N had managed to silently escape the house. However, the other girls who lived in the venue still clung to the hope that they would soon be in China, living idyllic lives.



Married into sexual slavery

All of the girls at the house answer to one individual they call ‘the Boss’, who is responsible for both them and the Chinese men they live with.

According to the girls, they are under orders from the Boss to wear makeup and dress in western attire at all times. They added that the Boss also facilitates communication between them and their Chinese ‘husbands’ who speak no language but their own.

“When we want to convey something to our husbands, we leave a message in a cellphone the Boss uses,” said M*, another girl who lived in the house. “The Boss translates our messages to Chinese using an app and conveys them to our husbands,” she said. “Similarly, if our husbands want to tell us anything, they type their messages in Chinese on the cellphone and the Boss translates them in Urdu for us.”

Asked about life in the house, M said she and other girls were often forced by their ‘husbands’ to sit with other men, often so that they could provide sexual favours to them.  She added that a Pakistani man who handles some administrative work for the Chinese men also raped some of the girls at the house and unsuccessfully attempted to force himself on others.

Still, M and the other girls at the house remained confident that the Chinese men who bought them as wives would one day fulfill their commitment and take them to China.

But while their dreams of moving to China have yet to materialise, those that do end up making the move do not find themselves living a much better life. According to sources, the Pakistani girls that were taken to China following their marriage with Chinese men were forced into prostitution.

An organised and sophisticated trap

Girls like N, M and others like them are being lured into sexual bondage using the promise of marriage by organised gangs. The gangs received as much as Rs300,000 to Rs500,000 from Chinese nationals for a single girl. A meager token sum from this amount is paid to the girls’ families.

Members of such gangs often include women who run brothels and specialise in ‘supplying’ girls. The gangs also involve lawyers who prepare legal documents necessary to legitimise the girls’ marriages with Chinese men.

In some cases, to trick Pakistani girls into marriage, Chinese nationals often claim to have converted to Islam. Such was the case for A*, who was tricked into marrying a Chinese man by a marriage bureau.

“He told my parents he had converted to Islam just a few days before he met them. He even presented a certificate to prove he had converted,” said A. According to her, once she was married, her husband kept her in a house in Islamabad and began teaching her Chinese. But after learning that he planned to turn her into a prostitute, A ran back to her home in Lahore and filed a case against her husband and others.

As more and more cases of women being tricked into marrying Chinese nationals have come to light, law enforcement agencies have been compelled into taking action against rings responsible.

“Immediate action is being taken on A’s complaint received from Lahore,” said Lahore DIG Operations Ashfaque Amed Khan. “All divisional superintendents have been directed to immediately act upon her complaint and arrest the accused and those who facilitated them,” he said.

The director of Federal Investigation Agency’s Lahore chapter Dr Waqas Abbasi also told The Express Tribune that both Chinese nationals and Pakistanis suspected of involvement in such cases have been arrested from various districts of Punjab. “Investigations are underway and further arrests will be made as more facts come to light,” he said.

Over three dozen arrests have been made in such cases so far, sources said.

(WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SYED MUSHARRAF SHAH FROM LAHORE)