A diminutive female figure enters the brightly lit courtyard, tugging a blue Disney-themed dress below her knees and swatting away the mosquitoes.
With a sigh, she expresses her disappointment that it is a journalist who has entered the makeshift brothel and not a client.
The brothel is housed in a gloomy roadside building in Katunayake, a nondescript industrial zone close to Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport. A former soldier stands guard at the entranceway where a sign advertises the facility as an ayurvedic spa.
Every day, Kalyani Wickremanayake*, 33, takes several clients behind a green curtain onto a makeshift bed. After her initial bravado subsides, she nervously shares her plight: “Poor politics has shattered my life and this is my only hope to put food on the table for my children.”
For the past two weeks, she has been selling sex to survive, as Sri Lanka endures one of the world’s worst economic crises.
And, she is far from alone. There has been a 30 per cent increase in women joining the sex industry in Colombo since January, according to the Stand Up Movement Lanka (SUML), the country’s leading advocacy group for sex workers.
Ashila Dandeniya, the SUML’s executive director, said: “They are desperate to support their children, parents or even their siblings. It is one of the very few remaining professions in Sri Lanka that offers a lot of quick money. But few know what they are getting into.”
Ms Dandeniya described a “huge movement” of women into Colombo since January, many arriving from Sri Lanka’s remote villages. The majority of the women previously worked in garment factories.
“These women have only worked in the garment industry for their entire lives. They have no professional training to find other, skilled work,” she added.
Opportunities in agriculture are currently unavailable to women as yields dropped by up to 50 per cent last year and a high proportion of the country’s farmland remains idle after the country’s ruling Rajapaksa family suddenly banned chemical fertilisers in May 2021.
Every day, scores of young women now arrive in Colombo seeking employment. About 1,000 women gather at a tall silver gate in Katunayake, a known site for recruiters.
The lucky ones will find work in a factory or on a construction site. The remainder are targeted by pimps and madams, who can easily exploit their desperation, explained Ms Dandeniya.
Often, the women are told they will be giving non-sexual massages, but on arrival at the brothel are threatened and cajoled into sex work.
Pimps are also known to visit women-only boarding houses on Colombo’s outskirts and target women recently pushed into poverty.
Prostitution remains illegal in Sri Lanka so Ms Wickremanayake’s* brothel markets itself as an ayurvedic spa: a retreat offering holistic, traditional treatments.
Pushpakumari Jayakody* is the most talkative of the women working at the brothel and readily reels off a list of her customers.
“Recently we had a famous member of the mafia in Colombo and I could see all his bullet wounds. I’ve had doctors, lawyers and even reverends,” the 21-year-old said.
“There is this one, old professor and he can barely walk, but every time he comes he pays to spend time with all the girls at once.”
@Emios
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/28/made-clothes-ms-now-selling-body-make-ends-meet/
With a sigh, she expresses her disappointment that it is a journalist who has entered the makeshift brothel and not a client.
The brothel is housed in a gloomy roadside building in Katunayake, a nondescript industrial zone close to Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport. A former soldier stands guard at the entranceway where a sign advertises the facility as an ayurvedic spa.
Every day, Kalyani Wickremanayake*, 33, takes several clients behind a green curtain onto a makeshift bed. After her initial bravado subsides, she nervously shares her plight: “Poor politics has shattered my life and this is my only hope to put food on the table for my children.”
For the past two weeks, she has been selling sex to survive, as Sri Lanka endures one of the world’s worst economic crises.
And, she is far from alone. There has been a 30 per cent increase in women joining the sex industry in Colombo since January, according to the Stand Up Movement Lanka (SUML), the country’s leading advocacy group for sex workers.
Ashila Dandeniya, the SUML’s executive director, said: “They are desperate to support their children, parents or even their siblings. It is one of the very few remaining professions in Sri Lanka that offers a lot of quick money. But few know what they are getting into.”
Ms Dandeniya described a “huge movement” of women into Colombo since January, many arriving from Sri Lanka’s remote villages. The majority of the women previously worked in garment factories.
“These women have only worked in the garment industry for their entire lives. They have no professional training to find other, skilled work,” she added.
Opportunities in agriculture are currently unavailable to women as yields dropped by up to 50 per cent last year and a high proportion of the country’s farmland remains idle after the country’s ruling Rajapaksa family suddenly banned chemical fertilisers in May 2021.
Every day, scores of young women now arrive in Colombo seeking employment. About 1,000 women gather at a tall silver gate in Katunayake, a known site for recruiters.
The lucky ones will find work in a factory or on a construction site. The remainder are targeted by pimps and madams, who can easily exploit their desperation, explained Ms Dandeniya.
Often, the women are told they will be giving non-sexual massages, but on arrival at the brothel are threatened and cajoled into sex work.
Pimps are also known to visit women-only boarding houses on Colombo’s outskirts and target women recently pushed into poverty.
Prostitution remains illegal in Sri Lanka so Ms Wickremanayake’s* brothel markets itself as an ayurvedic spa: a retreat offering holistic, traditional treatments.
Pushpakumari Jayakody* is the most talkative of the women working at the brothel and readily reels off a list of her customers.
“Recently we had a famous member of the mafia in Colombo and I could see all his bullet wounds. I’ve had doctors, lawyers and even reverends,” the 21-year-old said.
“There is this one, old professor and he can barely walk, but every time he comes he pays to spend time with all the girls at once.”
@Emios https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/28/made-clothes-ms-now-selling-body-make-ends-meet/
