Zunera once dreamed of becoming a computer engineer. Instead, aged 16, the bright-eyed Pakistani girl was tricked into prostitution in the UAE, beginning a four-year nightmare of cruelty, violence and rape.
Pakistan has long been an important source of cheap labour for the Gulf state, particularly its booming construction sector. But campaigners and officials say hundreds of young Pakistani women are also trafficked every year to supply the thriving sex trade in the brothels and nightclubs of Dubai.
Zunera and her sister Shaista were two of them. More than a year after she escaped, Zunera's pain is still etched into her stumbling, hesitant voice -- and also into her body, which bears the marks of countless beatings.
Vivid, angry scars run the length of her legs from ankle to hip, reminders of a botched operation after she was shot three times by the gang who trafficked her. Zunera and Shaista managed to escape their tormentors in but still live in hiding in a two-room house in a slum, fearing revenge attacks. AFP is withholding their full names and precise whereabouts for their safety. Their ordeal began in her hometown in Punjab province, when the family got into money trouble and a neighbour named Ayesha offered the sisters domestic work.
After a while Ayesha suggested she take the sisters to Dubai to work in her beauty parlour, getting fake papers to help the underage Zunera leave Pakistan.
