Thank you for calling a spade a spade in your article on the circus girls rescued from India ("Take us home", #202). You are the only paper that explicitly stated that the circus was just a cover for a paedophile ring. There should be no one holier-than-thou in this, everyone is culpable, everyone is to blame. From the parents who sold their girls, the unscrupulous pimps who tempted them with education and jobs, the village elders of the community in Makwanpur where the families come from, the Nepali authorities, human rights organizations and civil society who couldn't be bothered. We, Nepali citizens, who allow this to happen. And of course, the barbaric circus owners who used the girls and profited from their misery. The Indians have been trying to downplay the circus scandal saying the girls want to stay in the circus and don't want to go back to Nepal. They should be embarrassed, after all they are the perpetrators and the crimes happened in their territory. But, as with the case of the hundreds of thousands of Nepali girls trafficked to the brothels of India, this trade can't be stopped by shifting the blame to the country of origin. The client hardly ever gets the blame in prosecution of prostitution. The Indians owners and customers of this illicit trade have to be punished and this can only happen if the Indian government and the state governments first admit the exploitation is happening. Simultaneously we also have to look at the push factors that are driving our girls away. Poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and low status of women in our society prompt fathers to give their daughters away rather than be burdened by having to care for them in a male-dominated society. The circus girls are just the tip of this evil iceberg.

Renu Shrestha,
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