SWOP-LV NEWS

UK: WI turns brothel creepers

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:24:27 +0000

WI meets hookers … Jean and Shirley with Nevada prostitutes

By DEREK ROBINS

Published: 7/24/08

WI members will go on a whirlwind tour of some of the world’s brothels in a new Channel 4 documentary.

Hampshire WI members Jean Johnson and Shirley Landels met the working girls in a licensed Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada and visited a upmarket prostitution co-operative in New Zealand.

On their return they try to create a version of the perfect British brothel.

The documentary The WI Guide To Brothels is part of a Women’s Institute campaign calling for the legalisation of brothels in Britain and the reform of prostitution laws.

It’s been made with investigative journalist Nicky Taylor who in the film talks to women who sell their bodies on British streets and work in illegal brothels.

Nicky also talks to lap dancers, helps a prostitute’s maid, mans an X-rated phone sex line and tries to sell her body in a Winchester shop window.

A C4 spokeswoman said: “It’s a bid to see if it’s possible to set up the UK’s first legal brothel.”

The WI Guide To Brothels, C4, August 3, 10pm

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/article1465672.ece

“On the Issues Magazine” on Sex Work

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:36:03 +0000

“NEW YORK: Prostitution penetrated the news in a major way in recent
months — from ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of New York and his paid
binges with women to the suicide of DC madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey
and the Showtime fluff of “Secret Diary of A Call Girl”

But the media, politicians and feminists have not grappled with the
real complexities of prostitution. In its new Online edition, “Works
Hard for Her Money: Feminists and Prostitutes” ON THE ISSUES
MAGAZINE releases compelling original content — diverse articles,
art and poetry that challenge current notions and urge new thinking.

“The issue of prostitution has divided feminists for years,” writes
publisher and editor-in-chief Merle Hoffman in “Divide, Conquer and
Sell”

“Is the prostitute herself a victim of an oppressive patriarchal
system, or a free agent choosing sex work as a rational career
choice in difficult circumstances? ” Since sex is “a continually
renewable resource — unlike other body resources (sales of
kidneys), it does not self-exhaust; it can just keep giving …. We
ask who owns that resource, who has the power to use, abuse, buy and
sell it,” writes Hoffman.

Angela Bonavoglia’s “Of Victims and Vixens” describes the feminist
abolitionists who link prostitution to violence against women and
their clash in worldview with women who run sex-for-pay services and
see it as empowering. Juhu Thukral explains how differing
interpretations of human rights by feminists has become a flashpoint
in new anti-trafficking legislation in “Feminist Divisions Cause
Real-World Repercussions”

Major thinkers and artists offer other perspectives. In “Pimping:
The World’s Oldest Profession” Kathleen Barry frames in vivid terms
why some feminists see prostitution as bondage. Carol Leigh,
aka “The Scarlot Harlot,” describes the frustration of erotic
laborers who are denied basic rights. Artist Suzanne Lacy, featured
by art editor Linda Stein, narrates a display of her travels with a
prostitute.

To these provocative topics, Shere Hite, known for her work on
female sexuality, calls for a redefinition of women’s pleasure
in “Female Orgasm Today”

The range of the voices on the topic also includes Alexis Greene on
a gripping play by Lynn Nottage about war, rape and prostitution in
Africa; Sonia Ossorio of NYC-NOW on stricter anti-trafficking laws;
Ann Jordan on hardships caused by brothel crackdowns in Cambodia;
poets Minne Bruce Pratt and Erin Whitfield with two views on the
aftereffects of prostitution. Other works are by: Bernadette Barton,
Rita Nakashima Brock, Ariel Dougherty, Mahin Hassibi, Norma Ramos,
Jane Roberts, Nicole Witte Solomon and artists Audrey Anastasi and
Tiana Markova-Gold. Several videos are mounted, including “Turning
The Corner” by BeyondMedia.

ON THE ISSUES MAGAZINE will probe the topic further with new
commentary in its unique feature, “The Café” with incisive feminist
voices.

A print publication from 1983-1999, ON THE ISSUES MAGAZINE ONLINE
offers full archives and all content for free as a committed public
service to upgrade the level of feminist conversation. Visit
www.ontheissuesmaga zine.com “

Mary Magdalene’s modern legacy

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:28:51 +0000

The feast day for the patron saint of fallen women should remind the world of the plight of sex workers

- Tracy Quan
- guardian.co.uk,
- Tuesday July 22, 2008
- Article history

On Mary Magdalene’s feast day, worshipers march through the French town of St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume paying homage to her relics. How did her skull end up in Provence? After sailing to Marseilles and preaching the gospel here, Mary spent her final days in a mountaintop cave, according to legend. Despite the medieval origins of her cult, there’s something about Mary, patron saint of fallen women, that makes her profoundly relevant today.

And not just in southern France. In Cambodia, under harsh new laws, sex workers are physically abused in detention centres ostensibly created to save them. In New York, the mayor’s administration argues that 13-year-old girls who were kidnapped and assaulted should be treated as criminals - it’s for their own good.

DC madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s apparent suicide in May, still disputed in some quarters, was attributed to a sentence she was facing for prostitution-related convictions - up to 55 years in prison. Forced rehabilitation has been a recurring nightmare for modern prostitutes, and its history intersects with Mary Magdalene’s varied career. Nineteenth-century asylums for repentant harlots were called Magdalene homes and the inmates Magdalenes. Though feminist Christians argue that Mary Magdalene has been slandered and excluded by a male-dominated Church, her name is heard everywhere. In New York, Quebec, Haiti and France, restaurants, rivers, parishes, biscuits and babies carry the name Madeleine.

Her name isn’t controversial, but her status as sexual sinner is another story. She’s a symbol of our ambivalence toward the prostitute because we don’t actually know whether she was a fallen woman. Her sexual virtue is frequently debated.

Perhaps we should think of Mary Magdalene as one of those very clever fallen women who keeps her reputation a mystery. This would make her the ideal saint for lap dancers, for it’s often unclear whether they’re just dancing or also working as prostitutes. There is a question mark.

This popular saint has many faces, and her changing image reflects the reality of women’s lives. Her repentant streak hasn’t stopped her becoming a pin-up girl for painters, conspiracy theorists or fans of The Da Vinci Code.

In 13th-century France, ambitious medievals used the Magdalene to gain a foothold, pushing their competition aside as they glommed off her glory. Benedictine monks were evicted from St-Maximin when arriviste Dominicans gained access to her relics - and to a local king who turned his town into a pilgrim trap by exploiting the allure of her skull. She was viewed by these men as a valuable piece of property.

Mary Magdalene has become less of a relic, and more of a voice. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Lloyd Webber and Rice portrayed her as a commitment-phobic career woman. Her big song, “I don’t know how to love him”, sounds more like a therapy session than a confession. It’s not about sexual guilt. It’s about dealing with intimacy when your identity is formed through your work. When I first heard the album as a child, I knew I would grow up to be like this Mary Magdalene - neurotically independent. “So calm, so cool, no lover’s fool, running every show,” quite a few of us sang along, however naively. Impressionable young boys listened and, when they grew up, fell in love with prostitutes.

The modernisation of the Magdalene has ensured her ongoing commercial success, but it didn’t happen overnight. In 1873, pop fiction writer Wilkie Collins published a new novel, I visited the church in Provence where the medieval saint’s relics continue to attract pilgrims and tourists. Statues, wood carvings, paintings, candles, medals, even postcards of the Magdalene kept reminding me that real-life prostitutes are simultaneously worshiped and condemned.

Mary Magdalene has her modern side and continues to attract new followers, but does she have a message for us?

Two summers ago, while researching

I climbed the Sainte-Baume mountain to visit a cave where my patron saint is said to have spent her final days. As you reach the top there are 150 stone steps, in case you’re travelling with rosary, as many visitors have done over the years.

The best passages from the Sermon on the Mount - Beatitudes - are inscribed on stone tablets alongside the stairs. “Blessed are those who have been persecuted.” The eighth beatitude struck me then as intensely comforting and still does. In 2008, it just might be the message Mary Magdalene wants us to hear on her particular day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/usa.france

Religious Repugnance Obscures Need for

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:06:55 +0000

by Rita Nakashima Brock

In the mid-1990s, Asian feminists concerned about the sexual exploitation of children and women and the growing epidemic of HIV/AIDS urged Susan Thistlethwaite and me to write a book about the sex industry. We traveled to six Asian countries and to major cities in the U.S., interviewing sex workers, anti-prostitution activists, government officials, medical personnel, social workers, brothel owners, members of the military, religious leaders and even a few customers to write Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States.

We did not expect to advocate for decriminalization, but that is where our research led us.

Moral Judgments Interfere

Many find sex work morally repugnant, but similar assessments could be made of other forms of work, such as the nuclear arms industry. Moral arguments that frame prostitution as sexual immorality see it from the perspective of its customers, and this focus on sex tends to make the subject religiously radioactive. (Editor’s Note: See “Casting Stones: The Theology of Prostitution” by Brock in the Summer 1997 On The Issues Magazine.)

Judgment is cast, not on the customers seeking sex, who are often respectable family men and community leaders, but on those who provide services to them. Sex workers, on the other hand, see what they do as business, and most seek to collect their fees with as little sexual performance as is necessary. They separate their work from their own private relationships, as many workers do. Seeing prostitution as sexual immorality, rather than as business, maintains the gaze of the privileged with power and marginalizes the most vulnerable and visible in the system.

How Decriminalization Won Me Over

In Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, we concluded:

1. Criminalization has little impact on the supply or demand for sex workers but makes prostitution lucrative for organized crime syndicates;
2. Pimps teach exploited children to fear the police and entrap them by threatening them with arrest and imprisonment;
3. Pimps and brothel managers use fear of law enforcement to force sex workers to comply with dangerous practices, such as prohibitions against condom use or refusing a customer;
4. Because most law enforcement officials are male and socialized as men, they commonly demand sexual favors in exchange for better treatment—many are customers themselves, belong to professional associations with traffickers, pimps, or customers, and/or run their own brothels with impunity;
5. When other more serious crimes are committed against sex workers, law enforcement officials will often ignore them in favor of arresting the sex workers who report them;
6. Sex workers, even when victims of violence, slavery, or fraud, are reluctant to report to authorities or to prosecute such crimes not only for the reason above, but also because they are required to use their real names to file charges;
7. Sex workers, if they have access to medical help, are often reluctant to tell doctors the kind of work they do in order to get appropriate medical care and advice about how to avoid HIV/AIDS;
8. Poverty, addiction, and/or family abuse force many into sex work, but in leaving it, they are followed by a criminal record, which can prevent their finding other work;
9. Sexist systems deny women agency or respect their right to make choices about their own lives, and criminalization denies women one means of income to support themselves and their families;
10. Taxes are spent prosecuting adult sexual activity instead of more serious crimes such as rape, child sexual abuse, assault, trafficking, slavery, and murder.

Decriminalization Recognizes Consenting Adults

Decriminalization is no panacea for fixing the worst aspects of sex work, but it is a step in the right direction. In contrast to legalization, a system we call “the state as pimp,” decriminalization prevents the state from prosecuting adults for consensual, nonviolent sexual activity, whether or not money is exchanged.

Laws already prohibit nonconsensual violent sex, as well as slavery, human trafficking, sex with a minor, rape, assault, extortion and robbery. Criminalization makes prosecuting major crimes against sex workers more difficult and the work more dangerous.

New Zealand, a country that has long had women at top levels of government leadership, passed the Prostitution Reform Act of 2003, or the PRA, which decriminalized sex work. Controversial at the time — the PRA passed by one vote — opponents have failed at repeal efforts.

A thorough 2008 study of the short-term impact of the PRA concluded:

(T)he sex industry has not increased in size, and many of the social evils predicted by some who opposed the decriminalisation of the sex industry have not been experienced. On the whole, the PRA has been effective in achieving its purpose, and the Committee is confident that the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off under the PRA than they were previously.

The study identified areas that still needed work, such as the impact on neighborhoods of street solicitation and coercion of sex workers to take customers against their will.

Rejecting Benevolent Paternalism

In reaching our conclusions, Sue and I followed a basic feminist liberation principle: those most vulnerable and negatively impacted by an exploitive system must be respected and listened to carefully as experts with knowledge gained from experience. Benevolent paternalism, as well meaning as it may be, is still a way for those in power to deny it to those they seek to help and to impose their view of the world on others.

Sex workers should be in leadership in any movement intended to make their lives better. Their agency over their own lives must be enhanced, even when we disagree with their choices. We followed this principle in writing Casting Stones, and it led us to conclude that decriminalization is one feminist strategy for helping women lead better lives.

Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph.D., is Senior Editor in Religion at The New Press and co-author of Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, which won the Associated Catholic Press Gender Studies Award in 1996. She is a board member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and a former director of the Radcliffe Fellowship Program at Harvard University.

Also see: Casting Stones: The Theology of Prostitution by Rita Nakashima Brock, On The Issues Magazine, Summer 1997.

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/july08/july2008_4.php

Legal Momentum Applauds Senators Biden and Brownback on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:56:12 +0000

Last update: 3:41 p.m. EDT July 21, 2008

NEW YORK, July 21, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — As the oldest legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights of women and girls, Legal Momentum stands with our allies who work every day with trafficking victims to support the Senate version of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act co-sponsored by Senators Joe Biden and Sam Brownback.

“The United States Congress enacted historic legislation eight years ago, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, to combat the scourge of human trafficking,” said Legal Momentum’s President Irasema Garza, “and this legislation has helped thousands of victims escape slavery and receive protection, while their traffickers are prosecuted.”

But these gains are in jeopardy because of a House-passed bill that would distort the definition of human trafficking by expanding it to include adult prostitution.

Victims’ advocates and survivors oppose equating adult prostitution with human trafficking. Under current law, human trafficking is defined as labor or commercial sex performed under force, fraud or coercion or any commercial sex performed by minors. The House legislation proposes a major change in this definition. It removes the force, fraud or coercion requirement from adult commercial sex cases. By doing so, it places under federal jurisdiction cases, which are traditionally the province of state and local authorities.

Changing the definition will not make trafficking cases easier to prosecute. In fact, by requiring federal authorities to expend resources investigating adult prostitution cases which are traditionally under the jurisdiction of state and local authorities, it will spread thin the resources dedicated to policing trafficking. It will harm the most vulnerable victims of human trafficking — children — by reducing the resources dedicated to finding and prosecuting predators who go after children.

The Senate bill improves victim protections and strengthens the ability to prosecute human trafficking. It builds on the House-passed bill and expands protections for minors who are trafficked, and eliminates many of the obstacles trafficking victims have faced in accessing protection. This bill goes far beyond any of the prior reauthorizations and reaffirms the United States’ commitment and leadership towards eliminating modern-day slavery.

While trafficking cases are difficult to prove, federalizing prostitution will not make trafficking cases any easier to prosecute. The Department of Justice stands in solidarity with the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Attorneys General, and the National District Attorneys Association, all of which agree with victim’s rights, women’s rights and human rights organizations and the Senate bill on the need to preserve the current definition of human trafficking.

Any change in the legal definition of human trafficking attacks the fundamental integrity of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and will severely undermine our government’s ability to battle what is now an international trade in children and women. Senators Biden and Brownback have taken a courageous stance to protect women from modern-day slavery. Their bill expands our country’s commitment to protect vulnerable women and girls beyond the historic efforts to which our government dedicated itself with adoption of TVPA eight years ago.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO SCHEDULE AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT OF LEGAL MOMENTUM, CONTACT: Altagracia Levat, Legal Momentum, 347.739.7664, alevat@legalmomentum.org.

SOURCE Legal Momentum

 http://www.legalmomentum.org

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/legal-momentum-applauds-senators-biden/story.aspx?guid=%7B91110891-A45E-4BF8-AF9E-1818786F1D0F%7D&dist=hppr

Petitioners Want San Francisco To Decriminalize Prostitution

swoplv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:47:40 +0000

Posted Jul 20, 2008 by Dave G. (TruthMan)

San Francisco, CA Golden Gate Bridge

If the measure is passed by voters on November 4, it would ban the San Francisco Police Department from allocating any funds to investigate and prosecute sex workers on prostitution charges. ”Section four of the ballot measure-under the heading ”Prostitution Shall Be Decriminalized”-further states that the city, county, and district attorney ‘’shall not subject sex-workers to life long economic discrimination associated with having a criminal record.”

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris was quick to criticize the proposed measure saying that if it passed, prostitutes and pimps would have a welcome mat available to them in town.

Proponents of the measure say that it’s needed because sex workers deserve equal protection under the law and they want to stop the alleged collusion between owners of popular night clubs and some council members where dancers claim that sexual abuses have occurred. On the other hand, police have cracked down on clubs that aren’t as popular. Many strippers are also prostitutes.

There is an Erotic Service Provider’s Union in San Francisco and Maxine Doogan is the founder of it. She says that crimes against exotic dancers and prostitutes should be investigated and prosecuted by the Police Department.

The ballot received a total of 12,763 signatures, 5,000 more than what was needed. Three signatures came from sitting members of the San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.

One of the ballot measure’s provisions is to reduce racial profiling related to human trafficking of illegal immigrants. Federal and state funds would be prohibited for racial profiling. Although the proponents of the measure don’t want to see illegal immigrants exploited, they believe that the District Attorney and the Police Department are using this as a ruse to also target prostitutes and exotic dancers. District Attorney Harris opposes this provision: ”We need to use police resources to investigate where there is a suspicion that women and children, in particular immigrants, are being exploited.”

Currently, San Francisco has a First Offender Prostitution Program which allows men to pay a $1,000 fine and attend a class on prostitution in exchange for having the charge of soliciting a prostitute dropped from their record. The ballot measure would end this practice if passed by the voters in November. ”In April, an audit by the U.S. Department of Justice found that men who participated in the program were 30 percent less likely to be arrested for soliciting a prostitute than men who did not.”

There was an official task force on prostitution established by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1994. Representatives from the Mayor’s Office, public health agencies, law enforcement agencies, women’s rights advocates and immigrant as well as prostitute rights groups were involved with contributing to the report.

In 1996, the task force released a report recommending that the city departments stop enforcing and prosecuting prostitution crimes and instead try to improve the quality of life issues in the community that many residents continually complain about to authorities.

The ballot measure wants to see this enacted because prostitution crimes are still prosecuted. The ballot measure would become law on January 01, 2009 if passed by the voters of San Francisco.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/257648

India: Sex worker dies after being kicked by customer

swoplv — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:55:57 +0000

KOLKATA, July 6: A 35-year-old sex worker, who was kicked in the stomach allegedly by one of her customers at Premchand Boral Street on Friday night, died at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital this morning.

The accused, Raja Roy, a resident of Santosh Mitra Square, was arrested this afternoon. Police said, Roy had allegedly gone to the red light area on Friday night and met the 35-year-old sex worker at her house on Premchand Boral Street.

A scuffle broke out between them and Roy allegedly kicked the woman in her stomach in a fit of rage. He then fled the area. Other sex workers in the area took her to the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital yesterday morning as she complained of severe pain in her lower abdomen. The incident was later reported to the Muchipara police station.

“After being informed of the incident, an officer from Muchipara police station visited the hospital to record her statement last night. She told the officer that she was beaten up by Raja at her house. n SNS

Link to original story

UK: Women’s Institute hit squad tour brothels

swoplv — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:58:45 +0000

WI hit squad tour brothels

A HIT squad of Women’s Institute members scoured Hampshire’s streets and brothels on a campaign to legalise brothels in the county.

Women from Hampshire WI group “kerb-crawled” through Southampton streets as well as visiting some of the county’s estimated 600 brothels to see the “horrendous” working conditions for prostitutes.

The women were so shocked at what they found they have launched a campaign to highlight the plight of Hampshire’s prostitutes.

As part of their campaign the women have also travelled around the world to investigate prostitution in other countries.

The movement has been spearheaded by WI member and advisor Jean Johnson, and has won the support of more than 7,000 WI members nationwide.

The 62-year-old said: “Before embarking on our campaign we carried out lots of first-hand research.

“One of our team members went in to brothels in Hampshire to see first hand the working conditions these girls are faced with.

“Other members and I effectively kerb-crawled through Southampton.

“What we saw was absolutely terrible - it was heartbreaking.

“We saw lots of girls on the streets, working in the most terrible situations.

“I saw two young girls working in one of the most horrendous parts of the city near an industrial area.

“The myth of prostitutes wearing short skirts and low cut tops is totally false - they were just wearing ordinary clothes, but they were in a desperate situation.

“If anything had happened to them, no-one would have known.

“There was another girl who was addicted to drugs, who felt she had to continue working as a prostitute to fund her habit.

“Sadly a lot of girls on the streets are addicted to drugs, probably as a direct result of their work.

“From there it is a downward spiral and there’s no-one there to help them.”

Investigate laws In April, Jean and fellow WI member Shirley Landells set off on a round-the-world trip taking in Holland, the USA and New Zealand to investigate the effects that local laws have on prostitution.

“The approach taken in New Zealand was the best we found,” Jean explained.

“Instead of criminalising men who visit prostitutes, they are decriminalised.

“This stops prostitution being driven underground and into danger.

“That is what we would ideally like to see happen in the UK.

“We certainly don’t condone prostitution, but whatever people think about it it is not going to go away.”

To generate support for their campaign, the team held a rally in Southampton on Saturday.

WI members took to Watts Park in a motorhome - dubbed the Best Practice’ mobile brothel - to explain how brothels could be made much safer.

Sex trade expert and leading academic Belinda Brooks-Gordon described the campaign as “hugely admirable.”

She said: “The campaign follows everything that research has proven - that the decriminalisation of prostitution makes it safer for the girls working in the sex industry.

“Many want to be able to work safely and have the freedom to work for themselves.

“What Jean and the Hampshire WI are doing is hugely admirable.”

Cari Mitchell, of the English Collection of Prostitutes, added: “We have been pressing for the decriminalisation of prostitutes for 40 years.

“We are delighted that the Hampshire WI is pushing their campaign forward, and most importantly that they are putting the women’s safety first.”

The ground-breaking campaign will be the subject of a Channel 4 documentary to air later this year.

12:33pm Monday 23rd June 2008

By Will Carson
Link to original story

Sexworkers take to the streets of Bangalore

swoplv — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:26:08 +0000

visit http://sexworkerskarnataka.blogspot.com/ for photos

Karnataka State Coalition Against ITPA
No. 9 ABABIL, Patel Cheluvappa Street, J C Nagar [M R Palya], Bangalore – 560006

POST EVENT PRESS RELEASE

July 1, 2008, Bangalore

KILL THE BILL

Sexworkers take to the streets of Bangalore
demanding the central government to
drop the ITPA amendment process

National Day of Action against ITPA Amendments

Around 700 Sexworkers and human rights activists working on issues of women, dalits, workers, HIV-AIDS, sexual minorities, children, farmers, religious minorities, urban poor, environment etc. marched on the streets of Bangalore today, the National Day Of Action against the ITPA (Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act) amendments to urge the central government to drop the ITPA amendment process immediately. Sexworkers took to the street today not only in Bangalore but also in Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Baroda, Rajamundry and Bhuvaneshwar. The public rally started from Chikka Lalbagh (Majestic) at 3:30 PM and culminated at 5 PM at the Mysore Bank Circle.

Rallyists carried placards with messages ‘Don’t destroy the livelihood of Sexworkers by criminalizing their clients’, ‘Drop ITPA amendment process immediately’, ‘Recognize sexwork as legitimate work’, ‘Criminalizing clients of sexworkers will not help in combating trafficking’, ‘Criminalizing clients of sexworkers will increase HIV-AIDS’, ‘Criminalizing clients of sexworkers will increase human rights violations against sexworkers’, ‘Central Government must listen to the voices of sexworkers’, ‘Sexworkers demand workers rights’. All through the rally people were shouting slogans including ‘Kill the ITPA Amendment Bill’, ‘Anti-people Central Minister for Women, Renuka Chowdhry – Down, Down’, My Body - My Right’, ‘Our Future – We Determine’, ‘Sexworkers are not criminals’, ‘Punishing clients will increase the spread of HIV’, ‘We want Justice’, ‘Where and Who got independence of 1947 – not us, not poor people of India’

More than 2000 people gathered at the Mysore Bank Circle and listened attentively to the fiery voices of sexworkers leaders. Veena, treasurer of Karnataka Sexworkers Union said ‘I condemn the attitude of the Indian government which does not listen to the voices of the sexworkers and plans to go ahead with the ITPA Amendment process. We have been protesting on the streets for the last 3 years, have advocated with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on this issue and have been appealing to the central cabinet ministers. This government disregards the views of not only sexworkers but also of the parliamentary standing committee on this issue’.

Elavarthi Manohar, social activist said ‘The ITPA Amendment Bill seeks to: bring consensual sexwork under criminal law, criminalise poverty induced sex work as trafficking, punishes clients visiting brothels, allows lower ranking Police to arrest sex workers and raid brothels and detain sex workers in ‘corrective’ institutions for seven years. The ITPA Amendment Bill fails to support survivors of trafficking, exposes sex workers to violence & abuse and undermines HIV prevention work. The bill needs to be killed immediately as it proposes to terrorise sexworkers and their clients’.

The public meeting ended by burning the ITPA Amendment Bill 2006 symbolically.

Veena

Treasurer (Karnataka Sexworkers Union)

For more information contact: 9880223460 (Manohar), 9880365692 (Gurukiran)

Constituent Organizations: Aneka, Ashodaya Samithi, Jyothi Mahila Sangha, Karnataka Sexual Minorities Forum, Karnataka Sexworkers Union, LesBiT, Samara, Sangama, Sangram, Suraksha, Swathi Mahila Sangha, Veshya Anyay Mukthi Parishad, Vijaya Mahila Sangha

NZ to UK: Decriminalise prostitution

swoplv — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:09:22 +0000

Five years ago, New Zealand stopped arresting sex workers. Their lives have improved and the UK should now adopt the same approach

Catherine Healy
guardian.co.uk,
Sunday June 29, 2008

What can the UK learn from New Zealand’s approach to sex workers? Quite a lot, actually. On Wednesday June 25, sex workers and brothel operators mingled in parliament with a range of people – Catholic nuns, public health experts, and politicians – to mark the 5th anniversary of the decriminalisation of prostitution. Even the prime minster, Helen Clark, dropped in to pass comment on the success of giving rights to sex workers.

Throughout the day, participants heard from researchers who had been commissioned by the ministry of justice – included in the legislation was a requirement that a committee, appointed by the justice minister, be established to review the law and to assess its impact on the sex industry within five years. It was no surprise to me that these researchers found overwhelming evidence to contradict the wild claims of opponents to the Prostitution Reform Act. Opponents had claimed that, as a consequence of liberalising the law, brothels would create havoc in every neighbourhood, with thugs moving in to traffic women and children. Yet none of these claims came true.

One researcher surveyed 772 sex workers from across the country, while the other interviewed government and non-government stakeholders, including labour and health officials, and brothel operators, about their reaction to decriminalisation. The overwhelming response to the legislation has been positive. Police have moved from clogging courts with prosecutions for soliciting to preventing violence against sex workers. As one said: “Now, if I have any trouble, I can pull out my phone and call the cops, and they will come”.

We may be a small country, but we are part of the Asia-Pacific rim with its dynamic migration patterns. Motivated by claims of trafficking, immigration officials have raided brothels, seeking victims. They haven’t found any. As one sex worker told the audience: “I can stand up for myself. My boss may be an idiot, but he won’t try to push me around. I know the law”.

The chair of the prostitution law review committee – a retired Police commissioner and one time vice cop – said that people were gobsmacked when he told them the committee had found that many sex workers enjoy their work. Researchers confirmed that many sex workers don’t want rescuing – they want rights.

The committee concluded that the act has had a marked effect in safeguarding the human rights of sex workers and improving their occupational safety and health. I believe the UK could reorient its laws to achieve this reality. And the sky won’t fall in.

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Sunday June 29 2008. It was last updated at 13:09 on June 29 2008.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/29/gender.law