------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press Clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sex on the beach...is Calangute going the Baina way ? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- by Sukumar Shastri
Calangute has always been renowned for the three “S’s” — sea, sun and sand. But now, a new ‘S’ factor is threatening to ‘uncover’ the ugly side of the famed coastal village.
Barely a month after Calangute police busted a sex racket with the arrest of five minor girls under the Suppression of Immoral Trafficking in Women’s Act, at a restaurant in Calangute, yet another case of an alleged sex racket has come to light in the village.
Though these activities are not secret to some rickshaw and taxi drivers in the locality, it has taken some Calangute residents by total surprise.
Calangute Sarpanch Joseph Sequeira has admitted that he has come across information that a guest house at Umtavaddo in Calangute is promoting prostitution in its premises.
“I received a call informing me about a guest house in Calangute where a prostitution racket has been going on,” Sequeira told Herald. A concerned Sequeira now fears that Calangute “could turn into another Baina”, if the government is not serious of taking measures quickly to stop such activities. Sequeira also claimed that this was not a secret as far as some Calangute residents are concerned.
In fact it appears that this is no secret even to foreign tourists. Herald also received an e-mail from a foreign tourist who has been holidaying in Goa for the past five years.
The foreign tourist has alleged that, “there is a brothel in the middle of it (Calangute), and the Russian prostitutes who reside there and have done so for many months now.”
The e-mail mentions the name of the guest house where these activities have been allegedly taking place.
The mail further mentions that the tourist has seen numerous used condoms lying outside where children play and mentions about his disappointment upon seeing and getting to know such things happening in Calangute.
In his mail the tourist claims to have spoken to numerous tourists who also commented about how Calangute had “changed for the worse and many stated they would not be returning to the area”.
To a query on the ‘changing’ scenario of Calangute, Sequeira remarked, “If the government is not serious of taking measures quickly to stop such activities, Calangute could turn into Baina”.
When asked if he had acted in the matter, Sequeira replied, “I informed about this incident to the Legal Aid Cell when they had an open forum meeting with the residents some three months back”.
It is learnt through sources that incidents of organised and unorganised flesh trade is continuing along the costal area. Goa’s red-light areas are small by comparison to those of Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, but they share similar features.
In the red-light areas of Goa there are few, if any, local prostitutes. The majority have either migrated or been trafficked to those cities and ‘trafficking’ in minors in Goa has seen its presence in recent years and more prominently in the recent case involving the arrest of five minor girls.
A research paper prepared for ECPAT by Dr Julia O’Connell Davidson and Jacquiline Sanchez Taylor of the Department of Sociology, University of Leicester, UK, September 1995, focuses on Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism — Goa.
Their report states that “hotel prostitution (in Goa) is not taking place on the same scale that it is in parts of China and the former Soviet Union (hotel guests in these places report being constantly called on their room phone and approached in lifts, corridors, etc. by ‘masseuses’ offering sexual services).” “But it does not follow that there is no organised hotel prostitution in Goa.”
This recent finding of prostitution in Calangute and fresh allegations of prostitution taking place in Calangute has brought out the ugly side of Goa and in particular sex tourism in the state.
Only a detailed and swift investigation by the police will bring out the facts of the alleged sex racket in Calangute. ------------------------------------- HERALD 21/4/04 page 1 ------------------------------------
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