In a bare prison cell a veiled teenage girl huddles against the wall. Ruqaiya Khan is in prison because she wants independence from her family and in Pakistan Islamic law says that a woman's place is in the home. Prison is one of many potential fates for those who rebel: in Karachi, one asylum holds 1200 women, overseen by only a single psychiatrist. "Why are they not discharging us?" demands one woman, who appears in full possession of her mental faculties. Abuse and over-work cause women to die on average younger than men. On any day up to 3,000 slave girls are for sale on Karachi's streets. Exploitation can begin when girls are very young. Anna Sultan, now fourteen, was enslaved when she was ten. "He threatened me and said I'll tie you up in the room", she recalls. "I'll kill you, maybe I'll strangle you. Nobody would ever know." She eventually escaped to a girls' home for ex-slaves. It is thought that even the government is involved in a protected and flourishing slave trade.

A film by Mark Stucke.