Human Trafficking Victims Suffering Societal Taboos in Azerbaijan

Written by Saadia Haq

When Anja Mammadova, who is now a prostitute working the bars of Baku, was 15, she thought she had a chance of escaping a childhood of poverty in southern Azerbaijan for a better life. Mammadova was working as a manual laborer in the fields with her other three sisters and two brothers. The parents were clearly stretched to put food on table barely enough for all.

She recalls that for first fifteen years of her life, she never wore anything bought first-hand, they were lucky to get torn second hand dresses. Her luck it seemed was about to change, because of a chance meeting with a foreigner tourist, an Iranian man called Ahmad. Soon, Ahmad’s visits to her home became a norm and he asked for her hand in marriage, her parents struggling to support her and her three sisters and two brothers, were happy to agree to the match.

Their couple got married through the Muslim wedding rite and no one really bothered to register the marriage with the country’s civil authorities. After spending a week’s honeymoon in Lenkoran, Ahmad along-with Anja flew to United Arab Emirates. Her content parents came to the airport to bid them goodbye.  After arriving to Dubai, Ahmad took her to a strange and doubtful place, which later she found out, was a criminal hang-out.

Mammadova says, “I never saw my husband again, for worse I realized that he had already taken away my passport and other identification documents.” In a few hours, her world collapsed. It finally sank in that she was about to start working as a prostitute.

Trapped into the stinking brothel, Anja was chained and kept hungry for days. More over, she was injected some liquids through syringes that she recalls were some drugs that disoriented her senses. She says, “It was hell on earth, there were several other girls even younger then me. Day and night we were humiliated by our owners and clients. If we even tried to smile at each other, we were punished for that.”

During her almost 2-years’ ordeal, she desperately tried to reason and seek mercy from her clients to help her, but all such attempts were useless.

Anja Mammadova was freed when the Dubai police cracked down the brothel.

She was sent home on the first available flight. But, the story of her sufferings did not end there.

In the staunch Islamic Republic of Azerbaijan, trafficked women’s repatriation in a huge taboo. Azeri activists working on the issue say the situation is extremely challenging, because many trafficked women never manage to return home. And those who return have to face a lot of societal discrimination.

Azeri researchers say that mostly victims reply to newspaper adverts for unskilled jobs abroad as nannies, cleaners or waitresses, and find themselves forced to work as prostitutes when they arrive at their destination.

The country’s interior ministry’s human trafficking department says that most of the women trafficked from Azerbaijan end up in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. The ministry’s figures show that 95 per cent of those involved in people trafficking are female who work as agents, hiring consultants etc. But foreigners posing as tourists and keeping women for marriage are other methods.”

Anja Mammadova’s marriage taught her a life-long lesson. The Women’s Crisis Center in Azerbaijan says that many women like Mammadova seek their help because they have no place to go.

The Center’s director says, “It is really appalling that many of the returning women are rejected by their families. One woman who was forced into sex slavery and got home by a miracle was stabbed by her own husband.” Then another sad story of a trafficked young woman whose family attempted to kill her”, she said. “It’s a big problem when women who have already lost their way are denied help from their own relatives.”

Sometimes, the ostracized victims of trafficking end up in the domestic sex industry as they have no other way of surviving.According to the Center, a large number of returning women continue to work as prostitutes in the city bars, earning 50 dollars or more from clients.

This is exactly what happened to Mammadova after she was deported by the Dubai authorities following the raid on the brothel.

She had a bitter homecoming. She was constantly summoned by the police, who asked her humiliating questions, and her family refused to take her back.

“I think my father would rather I’d died. When he heard what I had been forced to do he hit me and threw me out of the house,” she said. “My mother gave me 200 dollars, which was all her savings. You can’t live in Baku on that kind of money, so I had to get work somewhere.”

Within a few days, Mammadova was standing at the capital Baku’s center, outside a bar in search of clients.

“We prostitutes have to pay a percentage to the bar management, as well as from time to time pay off to the police.  But things are looking up as now I am bit established with regular clients. In the initial months, there were some really nasty ones who didn’t want to pay. Others beat me up. You know – we get all sorts in this work.”

* The victim’s name has been changed to maintain confidentiality.

References:

1. Azerbaijan Ministry of Interior
2. Women Crisis Center, Baku