Rescue

CHENNAI, INDIA – Four families were rescued from a brick kiln where they were held as slaves and forced to work up to 14 hours a day. At night they slept out in the open; tents made from old plastic and dry leaves kept their cooking pots and clothing dry. Eleven children lived with their parents inside the brick kiln, and most were forced to work just like the adults. All of them said the owner of the factory had forced them to drop out of school.

What Slavery Looks Like

The families had been enslaved at the brick factory for more than three years.

KOLKATA, INDIA – When IJM Kolkata got the call from the city police after business hours on May 8, the team knew they had to mobilize quickly: Alleged traffickers were traveling through India by public bus with two girls from Bangladesh. If they moved fast enough, there was a chance they could rescue the girls before the traffickers had the opportunity to sell them.

Two IJM caseworkers left their homes immediately to meet police at a bus stop downtown. Police had arrived just in time to stop the bus, and they interviewed the suspects traveling with two Bangladeshi girls.

PHONM PENH, CAMBODIA – A police officer spoke to a small band of young women and teenage girls. It was after midnight. Just a few hours earlier, General Sun Ro had led his team of police and IJM support staff to rescue these young women from a brothel where they had been sold and exploited for sex.

"You are now no longer oppressed," General Sun Ro began, urging the young women to take advantage of the opportunities, vocational training programs and aftercare services available to them as sex trafficking survivors. He encouraged them to think and dream about their life in a new way.

CHENNAI, INDIA – After decades living and working in an abusive, inhumane catfish farm, more than 30 people were set free this week, including children and two pregnant women. On the farm, the slaves were forced to wade into man-made pools to harvest catfish, baiting them with maggot-infested chicken carcasses.

Shocking Squalor and Inhumane Working Conditions

IJM worked with a local partner, Association for Rural Development (ARD), to investigate the farm, located three or four hours outside Chennai.

CHENNAI, INDIA – IJM Chennai got a call on a Tuesday afternoon. The caller was trapped in a brick factory, desperate for help. Another woman who was enslaved in the factory was critically ill. The factory owner was refusing to let her get medical help. "If you don't come tonight," the caller said, "she will die."

Barely Surviving

IJM had learned that about 50 people were confined to the brick factory, ranging from 6 months to 65 years old. Children as young as 14 years old were forced to work long hours, doing back-breaking work molding and carrying bricks.

CHENNAI, INDIA – Nearly seventy people were rescued from a life of slavery in a rural district in Andhra Pradesh. Children were forced to work beside their parents in the brick factory around the clock – literally up to 22 hours a day – seven days a week. One 10-year-old boy told how he had to make 2,000 clay bricks a day, carrying eight at a time.

The twenty-one families were trapped inside the factory. No one was allowed to leave, and they earned about a quarter a day (14 rupees). The women had one hour a day to cook food for their families.

MUMBAI, INDIA -- Last month, IJM Mumbai helped police rescue Zeenat* from a dark brothel with barred windows. Six cots filled the cramped room where girls were serially raped, side by side. The brothel's customers paid less than $5 to have sex with a girl.

When the rescue team of IJM staff and police entered the brothel, they discovered that two of the girls they had hoped to find were missing. Apparently they had been transferred to another brothel outside Mumbai just a day or two earlier.

CEBU, THE PHILIPPINES – Two suspects were arrested during an operation to free seven young women from the bar where they had been trafficked. IJM assisted the Mandaue City Police during the operation, helping the trafficking survivors understand that the police were there to bring them to safety.

KOLKATA, INDIA – Today, five men were convicted of sex trafficking crimes in two cases in Kolkata. One of the men, a notorious trafficker named Nakul Bera, was also found guilty of rape. It was the first time this particular court gave a conviction for both trafficking and rape in the same case.

In the trial against Nakul Bera, survivors shared how they had been tortured and trapped in the brothel, pictured here. Police locked and sealed the brothel on that very night of rescue.

MUMBAI, INDIA – Four young women who were trafficked and sold for sex out of a motel in Mumbai are now safe in a shelter for survivors. IJM helped police rescue the girls from a second-story motel where they were routinely raped for profit. One of the girls told an IJM social worker that she "said no to every customer." But only one customer had ever respected her plea to be left alone.

The motel was located in a busy shopping area in Mumbai. All around, it was business as usual. But customers looking for sex knew they could go to the motel and request a girl.