Thousands of trafficked girls found in Mali slave camps

Nigerian girls are being forced to work as prostitutes in Mali "slave camps," Nigerian officials say, reports CISA.

The girls, many of them underage, are often promised jobs in Europe but end up in brothels, said the government’s anti-trafficking agency. According to BBC correspondent, the brothels are run by older Nigerian women who prevent them from leaving and take all their earnings.

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (Naptip) said officials visited Mali in September to follow up "horrendous reports" from victims, aid workers and clergy in Mali.The agency said it was working with Malian police to free the girls and help them return to Nigeria.

They said there were hundreds of brothels, each housing up to 200 girls, run by Nigerian "madams" who force them to work against their will and take their earnings.

"We are talking of thousands and thousands of girls," Simon Egede, Executive Secretary of Naptip, told a news conference in Abuja, adding that they were between 20,000 to 40,000.

He, however, did not give details as to how the figure had been reached.

In a statement, Egede said girls were "held in bondage for the purposes of forced sexual exploitation and servitude or slavery-like practices."

"The madams control their freedom of movement, where they work, when they work and what they receive," he said.

The trade is centred on the capital Bamako and large cities, but the most notorious brothels are in the mining towns of Kayes and Mopti, where the sex workers live in "near slavery conditions," said Naptip.

Many of the brothels there also had abortion clinics where foetuses were removed by traditional healers for use in rituals, said Egede.

Most of the girls were reported to have come from Delta and Edo States in Nigeria.

Many were lured with the promise of work in Europe, given fake travel documents and made to swear an oath that they would not tell anyone where they were going.

On arrival in Mali, they were told they would have to work as prostitutes to pay off their debts. Prostitution is legal in Mali but not if it involves minors.

Naptip said it had also uncovered two major trafficking routes used to transport the women from Nigeria through Benin, Niger and Bukina Faso to Mali.

Egede said Naptip was working with the police in Mali to return the girls to Nigeria safely, shut down the trade and prosecute the traffickers.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Motive Sought for Slaying of Church Worker in Bangladesh

Police, wife doubt student attackers’ story of cell phone theft.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, September 24 (CDN) — Authorities are investigating possible motives for the vicious killing of a church worker by students at Dhaka University.

A management student at the university and his friends are accused of torturing and killing Swapan Mondol, 35, on Sept. 12 in Suhrawardy Park, adjacent to the university. Mondol, a convert from Hinduism, was supervisor of youth mission for Free Christian Church of Bangladesh (FCCB).

The primary suspect’s friends claim they came to his aid after Mondol stole his cell phone, a scenario that Mondol’s wife and police said they doubt. His wife, Lucky Mondol, told Compass that she does not know why they killed her husband.

“He was an evangelist and earned good amount of money from his job, so he could not snatch a mobile phone in the park,” she said.

She said that when she rushed to Dhaka Medical Hospital after learning of the attack, she found her husband’s body lying stiff on the floor with two holes in his head. His body was smeared with congealed blood. He had been wearing a gold ring and a neck chain of gold, but those items and his cell phone were missing, she said.

Police suspect Mohammed Rajon and his student friends of the killing and have confirmed reports of other cases of violence by student groups who cite cell phone theft as a pretext for attacking innocent people.

Local police inspector Rezaul Karim told Compass the killing was cloaked in mystery.

“Some students of Dhaka University killed Mondol on a charge of snatching a mobile phone,” Karim said. “The students said they caught him red-handed, so why didn’t they just hand him over to us? If he had snatched anything from them, we would have recovered it from him.”

Police will file a murder case, Karim said.

“What a killing frenzy it was,” he said. “Nobody has the right to kill anyone, whoever he is.”

Karim denied Bangladeshi newspaper reports claiming that he said Mondol and three accomplices tried to steal a cell phone from Rajon.

Calumnies

Almost all Bangladeshi media portrayed Mondol, who studied theology at the Christian Development Center in Dhaka and completed graduate work in theology in Bangalore, India, as a thief who worked among park prostitutes.

“I am so shocked by the media, which published vicious calumnies about him,” she said. “The media reports added fuel to the flames and indirectly supported the lynch mob.”

Some newspapers quoted her even though she never spoke to their reporters, she said.

“One top Bengali newspaper reported that my husband used to go everyday in the park, and that I told it to them,” she said. “It is a thumping lie. Around 15 to 20 days a month my husband used to officially visit various districts in the country for church work. How an innocent man died with scandal!”

FCCB Chairman Albert P. Mridha told Compass that Mondol, father of a 10-year-old child, was a loyal and sober church worker who worked for 14 years in nationwide ministry.

“We do not have any program from our church to work among the floating [park] sex workers,” Mridha said.

A week before his death, Mondol returned from a three-week trip to southern Bangladesh to oversee church activities, Mridha said. He had planned to preach at a revival meeting in northern Bangladesh.

“Most of the days of the month he used to spend on tour for church work,” Mridha said. “Sometimes he used to go to the Dhaka University area to see the cultural programs.”

Bangladeshi media also mistakenly identified Mondol as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) worker, to which Mridha also objected, saying a church employee is not an NGO worker.

“He was an honest and sincere worker in his duty,” said Mridha. “If 14 years of past experience is anything to go by, undoubtedly I can say that he was not engaged in theft. There was different kind of motive to kill him which we do not know. But killing him on suspicion of snatching was a pretext.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

GFA women missionaries harassed by mob of boys in India

Three Gospel for Asia-supported women missionaries were cornered and harassed by a mob of nearly 30 boys. Chameli, Harshita and Vinaya were giving out tracts and sharing the love of Jesus in one of India’s coastal cities when the incident took place, reports Gospel for Asia to ASSIST News Service.

They had been able to reach out in the community for a while that day without incident. Then, as they were walking down one street, two young boys approached, demanding to know if the women were there to convert people.

They came toward them in full force, took away their tracts and began hitting Harshita and Vinaya in the head with them. Chameli, the other woman, tried to calm the boys, but the boys were so enraged that they began to verbally harass the women, even calling them prostitutes.

They grabbed all the tracts the women had been carrying, tore them into pieces and threw the fragments into the air.

Chameli, Harshita and Vinaya tried to escape into another street but saw two more boys standing in front of them. When they looked around, they saw more boys standing at every possible way of escape. Soon, the mob grew to close to 30 boys surrounding them and verbally abusing them.

This went on for half an hour, and the boys did not allow the women to leave. The women called a GFA-supported district pastor, Rushil, on a mobile phone, and he came out to help them. When he arrived, the boys began to slander him as well.

But somehow Rushil was able to help the women escape to safety.

“Though this incident traumatized the sisters, they are continuing the ministry with hope that those who opposed the Gospel will come to the Lord very soon,” writes GFA’s correspondent in the area.

Women’s teams like this one can be especially effective in reaching other women with the news of Christ’s love. It can be harder for men to reach them because of cultural restrictions. These teams have touched the lives of many women, showing them their worth in Christ’s sight.

GFA leaders ask for prayer for women like Chameli, Harshita and Vinaya as they daily share the Good News of Christ, that they will have the Lord’s heart, that their opposers will be drawn to Him through their witness and for their protection as they courageously reach out in challenging areas.

Report from the Christian Telegraph