 REUNITED: After ten years of search, Shangmo Lama finally meets her two nieces at Michael Job Centre in Coimbatore where they were kept as orphans. Lama had travelled with the rescue team to bring back her two daughters and her nieces from the school. |
After the rescue of 23 Nepali girls from an orphanage in Coimbatore in southern India two weeks ago and writing my report for Nepali Times (A far-away rescue, #571), I was following up to see how many of them had been reunited with their parents.
The girls, mostly from Humla, had been taken to Michael Job Centre (MJC) in Coimbatore when they were between three to seven by the infamous human trafficker, Dal Bahadur Phadera. Ten years later, the girls were found by the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation (EMBF) living in the centre as "orphans" of "Christian martyrs" killed by Maoists during the war. In all these years, the children except for those whose parents worked with the traffickers, had no contact with their families in Nepal.
When all girls were handed over and brought back to Nepal,we had expected this to be received positively back home and that it would spur up similar rescue efforts of other children sold and trafficked in India. But instead of being commended for the rescue, EBMF has been condemned in an orchestrated media campaign. It has been blamed for forcibly bringing back the girls from a 'good English medium school'. A television channel broadcasted footage of angry parents badmouthing the rescuers for endangering the future of their daughters. With their irresponsible and badly researched coverage, sections of the Nepali media ended up helping the trafficker.
They never bothered to check that in Bhairawa last week, when the children arrived, Phadera was there as well with the parents, most of whom are his relatives . A UML member, Phadera was convicted for human trafficking but used his political connections to get himself released after serving just three years. Now, he is using all his influence to slander the rescue and sadly, many reporters have played along.
The Coimbatore school is supposed to be an orphanage, but the girls were no orphans. The girls were said to be Christian, they were not. They were said to be victims of Christian martyrs killed by the Maoists, they were not. At anytime, if the Indian authorities had closed down the centre, the girls would have been homeless.
The police here have also been trying to pass the buck to cover up their lack of action. DSP Puja Singh said this week that it wasn't a big deal if the girls were falsely kept as orphans in India because "half the children in Nepal's orphanages are not orphans either" and that forcible conversion of minors is fine too as the country is secular now. Such comments prove how deep Phadera's political connections are and how everyone from the police to sections of the media are complicit in this crime.
There is not a shred of doubt that the Humla girls were trafficked to India to make money for the Michael Job Centre. The people who have objected to their children being embarrassed in public by the rescue might do well to remember that their girls were being advertised globally as orphans in the centre's website. The images and profiles of the girls were displayed online for sponsors to choose from. The centre has removed its website after being exposed. (See archived webpage of the centre)
