The term is usually associated with some distant exotic country where people are sold to plantations, construction sites, or bordellos. In the meantime, some countries of the Commonwealth are not exactly unacquainted with this phenomenon nowadays, and Kyrgyzstan is one of them.
Take a stroll in Osh in the evening. You will inevitably see groups of young women near cafes and stores. There are lots of "locations" in Osh where women are available - they include saunas, hotels, and hostels. Women are even delivered to clients' own apartments. Prostitution is known as sex-industry.
It is, however, a business venture only for whoever is selling women. As far as the women themselves are concerned, this is nothing short of slavery. The roads leading to this position differ only in trivialities. Young girls are usually lured with the promises of a job seamstresses or waitresses and a handsome salary. The girls agree, and that is that. According to Osh-based Public Foundation Friend, almost 1, girls aged 16 and more offer sexual services to the willing in the southern capital of Kyrgyzstan.
Not one of the girls this correspondent approached said she had wanted to become a hooker on coming here. And yet, they became hookers before they knew what was happening. Watched over by mamas, the girls stick to fixed "locations". Few of them are free-lancers, practically all belong to a pimp or, more frequently, a mama. At first sight, foreigners do not really differ from the locals. And yet, they do.
They are foreigners in Kyrgyzstan, and it makes things that more difficult for them. Uzbek girls are more timid and introverted, drawing them out is not easy at all. It is usually Uzbek girls with nobody left in their native country who agree to go to Osh. One of the girls told Ferghana. Ru that when her mother had died, the father took another woman and chucked the daughter out. The girl found no jobs in her native Andijan and accepted the offer of a job in Osh where girls made more than they could hope to make in Andijan even though not nearly well enough by Kyrgyz standards.
