The government of Goa, with the help of the police and the Goa State Women?s Commission have been misusing a court order passed by the High Court in July 2003 to systematically intimidate and victimise the women living in Baina. Despite repeated requests by the NGOs, and the Forum for Justice in Baina the government systematically neglected the part of the order that stated the recommendations by the Justice Kamat committee be implemented prior to any eviction or ?deportation? to their home states. These recommendations clearly state that a proper socio economic survey of the whole area should be done and the needs of the women ascertained. If they want rehabilitation in Goa or in their home states that must be provided; however if they want to continue in sex work they must be provided with an alternative site, which should be designated as a red-light area prior to any demolition in Baina
The authorities also failed to heed the warnings by the NGOs, experts and the National Commission for Women that experience from elsewhere in India and the world shows that simply demolishing the red light area will not only fail to eliminate prostitution from Goa, but will lead to the spread of sex work over a diffuse and ill defined area, where the women will be invisible, inaccessible and consequently vulnerable to abuse, violence, and infections including HIV. This would clearly render useless the decade-long effective HIV prevention interventions being implemented through peer educators including information, condom promotion and STI treatment in the area.
The NGOs working in the area had documented and repeatedly reported how the increase in human rights violations and cordoning off the red light area by the police since January 2004 had already lead to an increasing number of girls making short trips to lodgings elsewhere in Goa as well as in other red light areas in order to survive. The women reported rapes, forced sex without the protection of condoms, forced sex with multiple partners and increased risk of violence and police raids. An increase in presentation of symptomatic STIs to the health services combined with a drop in the condoms distributed through the NGO programs supported the suspicion that the women were becoming more vulnerable to HIV.
A study looking at the health implications of the eviction order was already underway with the full participation of the community. Unfortunately the authorities not only failed to heed these well documented concerns, but even the State AIDS Control Society did not seem able to convey the gravity of these concerns to the authorities; in fact the government cynically used the issue of HIV to justify their plans, deliberately misleading the public that the eviction of Baina would remove the threat of HIV from Goa.
Failing to heed any warnings about the adverse effect on HIV prevention activities and refusing to involve the NGOs or the community in any rehabilitation plans or plans for the future, the government aided and abetted by the Goa State Women?s Commission proceeded to plan the eviction with a complete lack of transparency. Having started to undermine the women through police intimidation and cutting off their source of income through cordoning off the area, they moved on to deceiving the women into registering and making photo identification cards in the guise of rice distribution. They finally commissioned an agency to do a socio-economic survey, that was not only unprofessional in its approach, but whose research team themselves intimidated and threatened the women to accept whatever the State offers them. The only rehabilitation plan that came out of this non-transparent and non-participatory process was to offer the women either institutionalisation in a transit camp in Ribander or to take a train back to their state of origin (even though many of the women have been born and brought up in Goa). Incidentally, the survey report was submitted to the Government of Goa after the demolition.
The government received a resounding vote of no confidence in their plans to institutionalise the women on the 13th June 2004, when not one single woman got in the buses for Ribandar ? this in spite of a full day of pleading and intimidation by the full state machinery and the Goa State Women?s Commission.
Despite the government being served notice by the High Court regarding a petition to challenge the High Court order on the day of the demolition and despite the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women emailing the Chief Minister and Governor and calling the Chief Secretary requesting them to delay the demolition until the end of July when the National Commission for Women was due to submit their recommendations for rehabilitation to the state of Goa, the Government showed its complete disregard for all norms and humanity by proceeding with the eviction on 14th June 2004.
The indiscriminate way in which the demolition process has obliterated the houses and property of families, NGO offices, gharwalis, NGO peer educators, sex workers, shopkeepers, bar owners (none of whom had been served demolition notices under the due process of law), and the hurry and arrogance with which they proceeded to demolish in the middle of the rains, make it obvious that the Goa Government never had the intention to implement the High Court order of demolishing just 250 cubicles used for sex work, nor did they ever genuinely want to rehabilitate the women. Rather it used sex work and HIV as an excuse to evict the people of Baina ? whether this was driven by ideology or a desire to lay their hands on valuable land, only time will tell. Suffice to say that in the name of stopping sex work the people of Baina, some of the most vulnerable people in Goa (both those engaged and not engaged in sex work) have been intimidated, abused, forcibly evicted from their homes in the middle of the rains, they have lost their homes and their property, and they have been beaten and arrested for just being there. Women and children were scurrying all around unable to collect their valuables and belongings before their homes were demolished. Others were frightened, confused and without food or shelter, all this in the middle of heavy downpours. Without food, shelter or a home of their own these destitute women are going to be more vulnerable to pimps and brokers than they ever have been before. In the name of ?cleansing? the state of sex work the government has abdicated any responsibility for providing shelter or housing for the thousands of people it has made homeless in one day ? in fact, it appears that they are trying to cleanse the state of the poor. In the name of removing the scourge of HIV the state is not only guilty of gross human right violations but also rendering the women, the population of Goa and the population of India more vulnerable to the spread of HIV than they have ever been before.
The government did not bother to take any measures for relief to the people it had so brutally evicted. NGOs stepped into the breach and are still engaged in providing whatever relief they can. It was only after considerable protest from the people of Goa and strong intervention by the Karnataka Government that some token relief is being provided.
Write protest letters to the Chief Minister of Goa, Secretariat, Panjim, Goa - 403001, India. Email:
cmgoa@goa.nic.in 
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