"Give the two hundred-year-old Kandupatti brothel site back to us or kill 700 sex-workers’, an emotionally-charged, 40-year-old leader of evicted Kandupatti commercial sexworkers Mamtaj Begum told reporters in the city yesterday.

Addressing a news conference at Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication (BCDJC). organised as part of a British Council-Thomson Foundation training course, she demanded of the government to put pressure on one Hossain Mollah In getting back Taka 245 million which was deposited by the sexworkers for a cooperative al-

legedly organised by Mollah. the Godfather' of the brothel.

More than 700 commercial sex-workers were unlawfully evicted from the city's only formal red-light zone. Kandupatti. on May 12 . 1997. A section of the hapless sex-workers has found refuge in other brothels at Tanbazar in Narayanganj and other districts like Jessore. Tangail. Khulna. Daulatdia and Ja-malpur. The rest are on the city streets, still eking out a living selling their bodies.

“We will set up garment factories or other income-generating projects on the site of the former brothel if we are given the money and the land back. Most of us have the intention to quit our previous profession’, a confident Mamtaj Begum, leader, said while revealing her plans for the future.

She alleged that Hossain Mollah. who married a brothel girl Renu Bibi some 23 years ago. rifled the cooperative's money and brothel premises by using his wife's Influence on the sex-workers. She also alleged that Mollah put pressure on local politicians and used musclemen to threaten the Kandupatti inmates while accomplishing his evil designs.

The sex-workers' leader added that a number of national and international nongovernmental organisations and other voluntary legal organisations were assisting them in establishing their rights. However she could not ascertain the people's support to their cause. She appealed to the people to come forward to save them from the inhuman situation they were in.