We Cry in Silence

Girls walk home from school in South 24 Parganas. For many girls in rural India, education ends before high school, which often costs money. Although child marriage is illegal, it’s still widely practiced. In this region, with high rates of child sex trafficking, families also worry that girls are at risk on long commutes to school.

On World Day against Trafficking in persons, we’re highlighting Smita Sharma’s book “We Cry in Silence”. We have copies of the book in the library for browsing.

WE CRY IN SILENCE is a hardcover photo book that investigates the widespread issue of trafficking minors for sex between Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The project unveils the vulnerability of girls and highlights what leads them into the traps of traffickers. The book seeks to address this complex, global issue at the local level, and open a dialogue to move people to work towards a regional solution.

We have copies of WE CRY IN SILENCE in the library for browsing.

When she was 12, S. left her home in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, with a family acquaintance who promised to find her a job in Dhaka. She was handed over to a man who smuggled her into the Indian state of West Bengal which shares a long porous border with Bangladesh. From West Bengal she was taken to a brothel in Mumbai and sold. S. was enslaved for two years before police freed her and sent her to a shelter. Six months later she met a woman who said she’d take S. back to Bangladesh but instead sold her to a brothel in Namkhana, a small town in West Bengal. After she was rescued again, S. has been staying at a shelter and waiting for her repatriation.

S. said her family hardly managed to buy food because they were so poor. She eloped with a man from Dhaka, Bangladesh who promised to take care of her. "How would I know that he had the intention of selling me?" said S., now an adult. "My life has so much pain." She was smuggled into India by river and forced to work in a brothel. She escaped with a woman she trusted who sold her to another brothel. S. was rescued and taken to Sneha, a girl's shelter in West Bengal, India.

A West Bengal police boat patrols the Hooghly River in the Sundarbans, a watery area with dense mangrove forests that straddles the southern India-Bangladesh border. The Indian state of West Bengal shares a long border with Bangladesh which includes many unguarded stretches, allowing traffickers to smuggle girls into the country. Traffickers often use rivers to avoid detection when smuggling girls into India.

S. was married at 13 and had to endure physical and mental abuse from her alcoholic husband. She gave birth to a son and was later abandoned by her husband. S. moved back to her parent's house in Chandannagar, India where she worked as a nanny in the neighbourhood. A few years later she met a man and fell in love. She moved with him to Kolkata where she was sold by him at the Kalighat redlight district. Her parents who came in search of her, found her at the brothel and asked her to move back home. S. refused to go back because of stigma and shame. Instead she sent her son away with them. She went into severe depression and months later poured kerosene to immolate herself. She suffered fifty percent burns and spent a month at a hospital.

Smita Sharma has photographed and interviewed more than 50 young survivors of sex and domestic trafficking in Bangladesh, Nepal and India. She has also interviewed traffickers to understand the methods they use to psychologically manipulate and trap vulnerable girls. Her direct intervention also led to the rescue of a 17-year-old girl from the red-light districts of Pune in India.

We Cry in Silence with Sharma’s photographs and the testimonies of these victims and survivors is published by the FotoEvidence Association and has been distributed to schools and libraries in India to create permanent evidence and raise awareness. The book and an accompanying newsprint zine was also made available to local law enforcement agencies, with the goal of sensitizing them to the dangers young women face and the methods traffickers use to psychologically manipulate and trap vulnerable girls.

A photograph of S., 16, from police files. S. has been missing from her village in West Bengal since 2013. She called up her father in 2016, three years after her disappearance to inform that she was being held up as a sex slave by Kashmiri militants at Uri region from where she had managed to escape and call from a public telephone booth. The police tried to trace her from that location but couldn’t find her. Her family still hopes she will return home one day.

M., 16, shows marks of self-injury marks on her hand. M. used to be beaten by her alcoholic father. In December 2017, she left her home in South 24 Parganas out of anger and took a train to Sealdah Station in Kolkata. At the station, she met three boys who befriended her and then sold her to a brothel at the infamous Sonagachi red light district. The local police station was tipped off by an informer about an underage girl being held captive, and the team went to the brothel and rescued her after three days. M. currently lives at a shelter for trafficked girls at South 24 Parganas, West Bengal.

We Cry in Silence is tri-lingual in Bengali, Hindi and English and a companion newsprint zine for free distribution contains excerpts from the book, safety advice and contact information for advocacy organizations. The book measures 21 x 15 cm and contain 50 images, interviews with survivors and commentary from the photographer and an anti-trafficking advocate.

Contributors to the book include:

Introduction: Sunitha Krishnan, Co-founder of Prajwala, and advocacy organiztion rescuing and rehabilitating victims of trafficking.

Photo editor: Sarah Leen, Emeritus Director of Photography Nation Geographic and co-founder of the Visual Thinking Collective

Book designer: Joao Linneau