Never forget India’s real Ambers

Listening to various reactions about the recent RTE programme Amber has got me thinking. The country has been talking about the disappointing ending and how let down and annoyed they are at the programme, especially the ending.

Every social media site and work tearoom has been buzzing with opinions and speculations, from those who feel like their time has been wasted and that they truly deserved to know what really happened to Amber.

Yet, at the same time, on Tuesday evening on Sky 1 – Ross Kemp: Extreme World, award-winning documentary maker, travelled to Mumbai and Kolkata where he tried to investigate India’s most deadly and shameful secret: a sex-trafficking industry where thousands of young girls are kidnapped and go missing every year and are forced into a life of prostitution and sex-trafficking in India’s major cities. One sex-trafficker admitted on camera to murdering at least 400-500 girls in West Bengal, while another former sex-trafficked child, who was forced into prostitution at an early age, spoke about the brutality and horror she went through.

Even though she was not much older than 9-10 years old, she was able to describe the most horrific and graphic sex acts that no child should ever even know about, let alone recall with the most detailed descriptions.

Unfortunately for us in The Hope Foundation, a Cork-based charity that works with the street and slum children in Kolkata, this is a world that we deal with on a daily basis. Every life has a value, regardless of what country or society you are born into and each life should be protected and cared for. But no-one seems to be talking about the Ross Kemp: Extreme World programme, or the thousands of young Indian girls who go missing every year.

There has been a sizable reaction to a one fictional Irish character who was kidnapped, and the programme gave a quick minute glimpse into the pain, suffering and difficulties a parent goes though when their child goes missing. In the end, frustrations were high, as no-one knows what really happened to Amber.

Yet in India, this has recently happened to hundreds of girls in West Bengal, and their parents. Hundreds of parents, brothers, aunts, grandparents and friends will never know what happened to their loved ones who were sold into a world where they will find no safety or comfort, only violence, brutality and despair. Yet, no one is asking what has happened to them. Instead our local & national radio stations and newspapers, as well as our social media sites are all alight with Amber, a fictional character who no doubt.

Our vision in The Hope Foundation is that ‘It should never hurt to be a child.’ This is so close to our hearts in Hope and where the children we work with on a daily basis are seen to be nothing more than a consumer item, to be bought and sold for someone else’s gain.

For anyone who is disappointed in Amber, we just ask for you to take a moment to consider what really does happen to young kidnapped children, and to understand that in the end, their families do not always find out the truth.

Tara Copplestone

The Hope Foundation

Ballinlough

Cork