From Asia with love: Murky world of belly dancers cleared by Echesa

The Pakistani girls rounded up during the New Year's eve raid at Balle Balle Club on Nairobi's Chiromo Lane off Ojijo Road in Parklands. Nairobi. [Elvis Ogina.Standard]

The crowd inside Balle Balle club on the fourth floor of Nairobi’s Loftus Plaza had worked itself into a frenzy. In a few hours, the countdown to the New Year would begin and with it a show of lights, smoke and something more spectacular would be on display.

In one of the backrooms within the club a dozen girls were sprucing themselves up. A puff of powder, some mascara, a strip of neon lipstick and silvery high heels to complete the look.

Finally, some perfume and flowing silk saris. Eight of these girls were long way from home.

But just before the countdown began, something happened. For the second time in six months’ detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations made their way up the darkly lit staircase and entered the club.

Inside, patrons still waited for the dancers to make their way out of the backrooms. A previous altercation between a dancer and their manager resulted in an entire window being broken. In place of the panes were pieces of mattresses meant to keep off the cold from Parklands winds and lock out prying eyes.

And before the year ended, what is now alleged to be a human trafficking ring believed to have links to top officers in different arms of the government would be blown wide open. And eight Pakistani girls would be arrested by law enforcement.

Investigations by the police and other human trafficking organisations show that the girls came to Kenya on diverse dates between August and December of last year on circumstances that remain unclear.

Within those four months, the girls whose passports indicate they accessed the country on tourist visas, had managed to regularise their paperwork. The owners of the club, Shaikh Furqan Hussain and Karan Ekdum – both nationalised Kenyans of Pakistani origin – are said to have obtained special immigration passes on behalf of the girls.

A special immigration pass is a document issued to persons given specific employment by a specific employer for a short duration not exceeding three months or to someone receiving education or training at an educational or training establishment within the country by which he/she has been accepted as a student/pupil.

Correct procedure

Immigration officials we spoke to said although the special passes issued to the Pakistanis might be valid, the correct procedure to issue them may not have been followed. First, an applicant for the special passes, in this case Balle Balle club, ought to have a history of prior licensing from the Tourism Regulatory Authority.

The circumstance under which the passes were issued are now part of investigations and court proceedings that have linked Sports Culture and Heritage Cabinet Secretary Rashid Echesa to the case. He allegedly signed off their entry to “promote transnational cultures”.

However, such cultural performances are normally cash intensive ventures. And for the girls and the establishment they worked for, four months of such should, at the very least, generate a revenue footprint visible to the country’s taxman. Records of income declaration from the dances to the Kenya Revenue Authority could not be obtained from the taxman.

The Sunday Standard could not however independently confirm whether any income from these transnational cultural promotions by the women had been declared to the KRA.

“Unfortunately, almost all government agencies, including some civil society organisations, work together to make sure human trafficking flourishes,” says Evan Munga, a programme manager with anti-trafficking organisation, ANPPCAN. A 2018 report by the United States Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking of Persons said Kenya is increasingly becoming a destination country for victims of trafficking.

“From official data derived from an unknown number of counties in Kenya, the government reported initiating nine sex trafficking prosecutions under the anti-trafficking law; during the previous reporting period, it completed 281 prosecutions, many of which were for smuggling vice trafficking crimes and prosecuted under other laws,” reads the report.

The government did not however report any trafficking convictions, and only nine prosecutions remained ongoing, compared with 105 convictions in 2016. Prosecutors continued to charge some defendants with immigration violations or labour exploitation as these were deemed easier to prove and less financially costly.

“Corruption remained endemic at all levels of government, and traffickers were able to fraudulently obtain identity documents from complicit officials, and the police often took bribes to warn traffickers of impending operations and investigations,” the report by the US Department of State said.

Experts like Munga also argue that the success human traffickers enjoy in the country is largely due to corruption of state officers. In that same year that no convictions were recorded there were no reports of any investigations, prosecutions or convictions of government employees involved in human trafficking. “Traffickers are emboldened by their close links to individuals in positions of power and use these direct and indirect links to grow their businesses without fear,” Munga says.

On Friday, a magistrate ordered that the eight girls from Pakistan whisked off in the dead of the night from Balle Balle be kept in a safe house to enable the police establish whether they are victims of human trafficking.

Tabled evidence

Senior Principal Magistrate Kennedy Cheruiyot, sitting at the Milimani Law Courts, made this decision after a lawyer representing the girls and their employer tabled evidence that showed the group had in their possession special permits issued by CS Echesa.

And yesterday, the government deported the girls. Immigration officers said senior government officials were afraid that if the case dragged on, it could result in unwarranted embarrassment to the State. The girls left aboard a 3pm Emirates flight destined for Karachi with a four-hour layover in Dubai.?

In December last year, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i announced that the Immigration Department would no longer be issuing work permits or special immigration passes to applicants who come to the country on tourist visas but wish to regularise their stay by applying for work permits or special passes while already in the country. Passports of the eight show that at the time of entry into the country, they were all on tourist visas.

In July last year, detectives again conducted a similar raid at Balle Balle and rescued 21 Nepalese girls and again arrested the club’s owners in a case that is still ongoing at the Milimani Law Courts.

The building on which Balle Balle stands is unremarkable. It has pale white walls, more vacant spaces than occupied ones and a noisy elevator. If you take the staircase, you get off on the fourth floor and turn left into a thinly carpeted passageway. The walls leading to the club are plastered with posters of Bollywood superstars. A store and a kitchenette are to the left. The holes and tears on the carpet are a testament to the heavy traffic that goes through the sound proofed double doors that lead into the club every night.

On New Year’s Eve, tens of patrons thronged the club to claim some spoils for the night and end their year with a bang, so to speak.

But as the calendars changed from 2018 to 2019 the evening ended not in joy but with the sad sight of the pitiful, sobbing figures of the eight girls, some seated at the edge of the dance floor – a raised semi-circle of wood and plastic on one end of the club – while four others crammed themselves into a two-seater couch.

Although the eight eventually ended in a government-recognised safe house, thousands more continue to suffer through the same cycle of bondage and modern-day slavery as Mujra (a type of Indian dance normally performed to entertain men) dancers, sometimes with the full knowledge and the participation of those required to protect them.