Most recent articles on prostitution related laws, opinions, comments
- Thread starter gustave55
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will sexworkers allowed to speak agaist the bill in committee? when will the SCC struck down this bill like they did before with the cyberbullying bill?
The SCC did not strike down the cyber-bullying bill. They ruled on a case that involved Internet privacy. Opponents are saying the bill will need to be re-worked in light of the SCC's decision.
Bill C-36 and Prostitution in Canada: Moral Criminalization of Sex Workers
Bill C-36 and Prostitution in Canada: Moral Criminalization of Sex Workers
The Canadian government established The Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital in 1889 to face the growing criticism on security in the labour force. Too many workers were being hurt, too many oppressive working conditions were still in place, but the federal government refused to act, saying it would overstep into provincial jurisdiction.
In 1914, Ontario is the first province to institute the Workmen's Compensation Act for workers injured on the job. In 1972, Saskatchewan follows with a first of its kind Occupational Health Act, which makes both health and safety the joint responsibility of management and workers. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted in 1982, but following mass protests around the country over the next decades, the Supreme Court, in 2007, overturned more than twenty years of Charter of workplace jurisprudence by allowing for unionized healthcare and social services for workers.
Then, in December of 2013, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Canada's major prostitution laws, stating unequivocally that Parliament's restrictive measures had infringed on the constitutional rights and security of prostitutes. Ruling on the Bedford Case, the Court gave the Minister of Justice Peter MacKay one year to revise the laws in favour of more protective measures.
n early June 2014, MacKay did just that, unveiling a prostitution bill based on the Nordic model, calling it a Canadian version that criminalized the purchase of sex and scoffed in the face of what the Supreme Court had requested.
The Nordic model has been condemned worldwide, and the Canadian version appears far worse. The Bill intensely persecutes clients, criminalizing the use of sex services with five years in prison, while also targeting anyone who receives material benefits from prostitution. It bans the advertisement of prostitution, even in the online marketplace, and places restrictions on where and how prostitutes can practise their trade. Undeniably, it paints prostitutes as the immoral decay in society and their clients as sexually unhinged.
Bill C-36, ironically entitled The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, believes paid sex is a form of violence against women, heavily steeped in inequalities between the sexes and the moral preservation of the purity of female sexuality. Under this bill, sex for money is inherently undignified and impure, and women who choose this line of work are whores to be castigated in the public eye - but most are undoubtedly victims, and the proprietary and paternalistic nature that C-36 holds towards women emboldens it to 'save' women from their bad choices.
The Bill is lax on defining terms, which are intrinsic to law, security and criminalization. 'Public space', 'avails', 'where children are expected to be present' - all these terms would be up for varying definition by the courts. Does not benefiting from avails mean that prostitutes could not hire drivers, body guards, screeners to improve their security? If public space is widely defined, will prostitutes be forced to work indoors but not tell anyone for fear of losing clients? Does public space include the internet? Defining terms is the basic structure of any law, and MacKay fails miserably in this, aiming to leave definitions open in the hopes of stricter legal interpretation.
As is, Bill C-36 would be struck down by the Supreme Court as it does nothing to improve the safety of sex workers. In their 2013 decision, the Court stated: "It is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money," and nor is it a crime to buy it. MacKay changed that with the tabling of Bill C-36, defying new Canadian polls that suggest "more canadians favour decriminalization than cracking down on prostitutes and clients."
Criminalizing the use of sex services would only increase the security risks for sex workers, male, female and trans. Clients who fear severe repercussion in the form of hefty fines and five years of jail time would demand heightened anonymity, refusing to give their name or phone numbers, refusing screening or public exchanges. The more shadowy the transaction and with fewer people involved (re: security or drivers) the less security there is for the sex worker. The Bill also allows all the same search and seize measures for police, doing nothing to curtail police brutality nor educate and train forces on protection and the very measures of equality the Bill pretends to uphold. The preamble speaks of 'human dignity' and 'equality', encouraging the reporting of incidents and compelling prostitutes to leave sex work, but nowhere is there mention of support lines or groups, secure and affordable housing, alternative income sources, or, and why not, a bill to fight poverty instead of prostitution. Instead the Bill imposes dangerous working conditions on sex workers, defying the Supreme Court ruling in a desperate attempt to morally quell a trade that has been defying law (and prideful patriarchy) since the dawn of time.
That women could possibly use their sexuality for trade is daunting to the stronghold of patriarchy. Intrinsically, it removes men from the biological imperative: they are no longer providers, having been completely left out of the equation. That a woman's sexuality has always been under a man's control is nothing new - indeed I've often written how a culture's purity and a family's pride and moral standing is written on the woman's body - so it only reasons that when women step outside of this traditional sexual role, they would be labeled as immoral for doing so. Traditionally, prostitutes are either whores or victims, immoral sluts or victims of circumstance. For the Harper conservative government to have chosen the latter is, again, no surprise, such parental views of women follow a long line of women never being considered as full persons endowed with the same inalienable rights and abilities as men: we are less than, we are other, and constantly need male guidance with our choices, lest we choose wrong. Decriminalizing prostitution, however, need not fall under such traditionally patriarchal terms. New Zealand has done it, where prostitution operates under employment and public health laws, treating women as full human beings, able to make their own choices with their bodies.
Sex, historically from church to marriage, was either for procreation or pleasure - certainly not for capitalism. But, undeniably, it has always been so - in times of richness and poverty, women have used their bodies for gainful means. Indeed, prostitution epitomizes the use of capitalist forces to trade a service within a high market demand. Dangers lie also in the way we speak of women, and of prostitutes: are they victims? Are they poor innocent girls, forced into a trade unbeknownst to them? And why is sex for money more importantly valued than other jobs? We all must make a living, and while some are CEOs, others collect trash, wash toilets, clean sewer tanks or work night shifts and day shifts and back to back shifts for less than the minimum wage. Yet the uproar against these jobs is minimal: we are not concerned with bettering our economy and providing better resources to these workers, we are not looking to save them, nor are we victimizing their condition, yet it could be argued that capitalism is structured in a way that forces underemployment and overworking, pushing down whole segments of the population into slave-like conditions, for the benefit of the very few. If women are choosing to work in the sex industry and make more than working at Starbucks, pay their taxes and are fine with it, what government could not admit that this is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work?
Peter MacKay has called prostitutes 'degrading' and their clients 'perverts' - stating that "no one chooses this, it is inherently degrading and inherently violent." For one man and one party's moral agenda to so taint such a wide-reaching law is unconscionable, and may even turn the law into a form of gender-based violence, as it imposes conditions harmful to a large group based primarily on gender.* Luckily the Supreme Court will send it back for revision, and hopefully with a slap on the proverbial wrist.
Canadian women, and all sex workers, deserve better.
http://theternalist.blogspot.ca/2014/06/bill-c-36-and-prostitution-in-canada.html?spref=tw
Bill C-36 and Prostitution in Canada: Moral Criminalization of Sex Workers
The Canadian government established The Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital in 1889 to face the growing criticism on security in the labour force. Too many workers were being hurt, too many oppressive working conditions were still in place, but the federal government refused to act, saying it would overstep into provincial jurisdiction.
In 1914, Ontario is the first province to institute the Workmen's Compensation Act for workers injured on the job. In 1972, Saskatchewan follows with a first of its kind Occupational Health Act, which makes both health and safety the joint responsibility of management and workers. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted in 1982, but following mass protests around the country over the next decades, the Supreme Court, in 2007, overturned more than twenty years of Charter of workplace jurisprudence by allowing for unionized healthcare and social services for workers.
Then, in December of 2013, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Canada's major prostitution laws, stating unequivocally that Parliament's restrictive measures had infringed on the constitutional rights and security of prostitutes. Ruling on the Bedford Case, the Court gave the Minister of Justice Peter MacKay one year to revise the laws in favour of more protective measures.
n early June 2014, MacKay did just that, unveiling a prostitution bill based on the Nordic model, calling it a Canadian version that criminalized the purchase of sex and scoffed in the face of what the Supreme Court had requested.
The Nordic model has been condemned worldwide, and the Canadian version appears far worse. The Bill intensely persecutes clients, criminalizing the use of sex services with five years in prison, while also targeting anyone who receives material benefits from prostitution. It bans the advertisement of prostitution, even in the online marketplace, and places restrictions on where and how prostitutes can practise their trade. Undeniably, it paints prostitutes as the immoral decay in society and their clients as sexually unhinged.
Bill C-36, ironically entitled The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, believes paid sex is a form of violence against women, heavily steeped in inequalities between the sexes and the moral preservation of the purity of female sexuality. Under this bill, sex for money is inherently undignified and impure, and women who choose this line of work are whores to be castigated in the public eye - but most are undoubtedly victims, and the proprietary and paternalistic nature that C-36 holds towards women emboldens it to 'save' women from their bad choices.
The Bill is lax on defining terms, which are intrinsic to law, security and criminalization. 'Public space', 'avails', 'where children are expected to be present' - all these terms would be up for varying definition by the courts. Does not benefiting from avails mean that prostitutes could not hire drivers, body guards, screeners to improve their security? If public space is widely defined, will prostitutes be forced to work indoors but not tell anyone for fear of losing clients? Does public space include the internet? Defining terms is the basic structure of any law, and MacKay fails miserably in this, aiming to leave definitions open in the hopes of stricter legal interpretation.
As is, Bill C-36 would be struck down by the Supreme Court as it does nothing to improve the safety of sex workers. In their 2013 decision, the Court stated: "It is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money," and nor is it a crime to buy it. MacKay changed that with the tabling of Bill C-36, defying new Canadian polls that suggest "more canadians favour decriminalization than cracking down on prostitutes and clients."
Criminalizing the use of sex services would only increase the security risks for sex workers, male, female and trans. Clients who fear severe repercussion in the form of hefty fines and five years of jail time would demand heightened anonymity, refusing to give their name or phone numbers, refusing screening or public exchanges. The more shadowy the transaction and with fewer people involved (re: security or drivers) the less security there is for the sex worker. The Bill also allows all the same search and seize measures for police, doing nothing to curtail police brutality nor educate and train forces on protection and the very measures of equality the Bill pretends to uphold. The preamble speaks of 'human dignity' and 'equality', encouraging the reporting of incidents and compelling prostitutes to leave sex work, but nowhere is there mention of support lines or groups, secure and affordable housing, alternative income sources, or, and why not, a bill to fight poverty instead of prostitution. Instead the Bill imposes dangerous working conditions on sex workers, defying the Supreme Court ruling in a desperate attempt to morally quell a trade that has been defying law (and prideful patriarchy) since the dawn of time.
That women could possibly use their sexuality for trade is daunting to the stronghold of patriarchy. Intrinsically, it removes men from the biological imperative: they are no longer providers, having been completely left out of the equation. That a woman's sexuality has always been under a man's control is nothing new - indeed I've often written how a culture's purity and a family's pride and moral standing is written on the woman's body - so it only reasons that when women step outside of this traditional sexual role, they would be labeled as immoral for doing so. Traditionally, prostitutes are either whores or victims, immoral sluts or victims of circumstance. For the Harper conservative government to have chosen the latter is, again, no surprise, such parental views of women follow a long line of women never being considered as full persons endowed with the same inalienable rights and abilities as men: we are less than, we are other, and constantly need male guidance with our choices, lest we choose wrong. Decriminalizing prostitution, however, need not fall under such traditionally patriarchal terms. New Zealand has done it, where prostitution operates under employment and public health laws, treating women as full human beings, able to make their own choices with their bodies.
Sex, historically from church to marriage, was either for procreation or pleasure - certainly not for capitalism. But, undeniably, it has always been so - in times of richness and poverty, women have used their bodies for gainful means. Indeed, prostitution epitomizes the use of capitalist forces to trade a service within a high market demand. Dangers lie also in the way we speak of women, and of prostitutes: are they victims? Are they poor innocent girls, forced into a trade unbeknownst to them? And why is sex for money more importantly valued than other jobs? We all must make a living, and while some are CEOs, others collect trash, wash toilets, clean sewer tanks or work night shifts and day shifts and back to back shifts for less than the minimum wage. Yet the uproar against these jobs is minimal: we are not concerned with bettering our economy and providing better resources to these workers, we are not looking to save them, nor are we victimizing their condition, yet it could be argued that capitalism is structured in a way that forces underemployment and overworking, pushing down whole segments of the population into slave-like conditions, for the benefit of the very few. If women are choosing to work in the sex industry and make more than working at Starbucks, pay their taxes and are fine with it, what government could not admit that this is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work?
Peter MacKay has called prostitutes 'degrading' and their clients 'perverts' - stating that "no one chooses this, it is inherently degrading and inherently violent." For one man and one party's moral agenda to so taint such a wide-reaching law is unconscionable, and may even turn the law into a form of gender-based violence, as it imposes conditions harmful to a large group based primarily on gender.* Luckily the Supreme Court will send it back for revision, and hopefully with a slap on the proverbial wrist.
Canadian women, and all sex workers, deserve better.
http://theternalist.blogspot.ca/2014/06/bill-c-36-and-prostitution-in-canada.html?spref=tw
After Bedford @AfterBedford · 36m
#C36 set to be in parl today after 3:00pm. Unfortunately, I can't live tweet it today.
#C36 set to be in parl today after 3:00pm. Unfortunately, I can't live tweet it today.
Retweeted by Françoise Boivin
Robert Fife @RobertFife · 3h
MPs on Justice cmtte will be working in July hearing testimony on controversial prostitution bill. 1st meeting on July 7. #cdnpoli
Robert Fife @RobertFife · 3h
MPs on Justice cmtte will be working in July hearing testimony on controversial prostitution bill. 1st meeting on July 7. #cdnpoli
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/polit...ostitution-bill-a-step-in-the-wrong-direction
Canada's prostitution bill a step in the wrong direction
On June 4, Justice Minister Peter MacKay tabled an anti-prostitution bill that he claimed was not anti-prostitute. According to the minister, the target of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Person Act, Bill C-36, was “the perpetrators, the perverts, [and] the pimps.” But don’t be fooled, if this bill becomes law, sex workers will face arrest, violence and violations of their human rights.
The law would criminalize communicating for the purposes of selling sexual services in public, or buying, advertising or benefitting from the sale of sexual services. These provisions won’t protect sex workers; they will do the opposite, and they violate their right to security of person and freedom of expression. Criminalizing communication will disproportionately target Aboriginal, poor, and transgender women working on the streets for arrest. It will also severely limit sex workers’ abilities to take life-saving measures such as screening clients. Last year in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court recognized this concern, saying that “communication is an essential tool that can decrease risk.”
Criminalizing clients will also harm sex workers, forcing them to work in more dangerous and isolated locations. In 2012, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which Human Rights Watch has criticized for procedural shortcomings, rightly said that fear of police harassment or arrest “denies the sex worker the time to innately sense whether a client is a ‘bad trick’,” and that moving to a darker, isolated area “puts her in a more dangerous environment.”
Criminalizing clients will also make it impossible to open safe refuges for sex workers to take clients to, such as Grandma’s House, opened in Vancouver by the Aboriginal sex worker Jamie-Lee Hamilton. Again the Supreme Court was clear: “For some prostitutes, particularly those who are destitute, safe houses such as Grandma’s House may be critical.”
The Conservative government purports to draw inspiration from the “Nordic model” which seeks to criminalize clients but not sex workers. Yet the model is not as successful as the government contends. International health and human rights agencies and experts have all concluded that criminalizing sex work and related activities threaten sex workers’ health and rights. In December 2012, UNAIDS, WHO and the UN Population Fund called for governments to work toward decriminalizing sex work and removing unjust laws and regulations against sex workers.
Last year Human Rights Watch adopted a similar policy for adult, consensual sex, favouring decriminalizing sex work. We came to this decision after decades of research on abuses against sex workers in more than a dozen countries, and working closely with sex worker organizations and their representatives.
We found that where sex work was criminalized, sex workers are reluctant to report violence and abuse. After looking at evidence from around the world, we concluded that criminalizing other aspects of sex work can also lead to harm.
To be sure, decriminalizing sex work would not eliminate all of the risks of violence and exploitation for sex workers. However, decriminalization allows sex workers to organize to prevent and address human rights abuses, including trafficking, and to obtain justice. In New Zealand, where sex work was decriminalized in 2003, authorities have not detected a single case of trafficking in the sex trade despite multiple investigations. Research has found that sex workers’ ability to refuse clients and to report abuse to police had greatly increased under decriminalization.
Far from assisting “exploited persons” or “protecting communities,” this bill is a step backward for human rights, and especially women’s rights, in Canada.
Joe Amon is the director of the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch.
Canada's prostitution bill a step in the wrong direction
On June 4, Justice Minister Peter MacKay tabled an anti-prostitution bill that he claimed was not anti-prostitute. According to the minister, the target of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Person Act, Bill C-36, was “the perpetrators, the perverts, [and] the pimps.” But don’t be fooled, if this bill becomes law, sex workers will face arrest, violence and violations of their human rights.
The law would criminalize communicating for the purposes of selling sexual services in public, or buying, advertising or benefitting from the sale of sexual services. These provisions won’t protect sex workers; they will do the opposite, and they violate their right to security of person and freedom of expression. Criminalizing communication will disproportionately target Aboriginal, poor, and transgender women working on the streets for arrest. It will also severely limit sex workers’ abilities to take life-saving measures such as screening clients. Last year in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court recognized this concern, saying that “communication is an essential tool that can decrease risk.”
Criminalizing clients will also harm sex workers, forcing them to work in more dangerous and isolated locations. In 2012, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, which Human Rights Watch has criticized for procedural shortcomings, rightly said that fear of police harassment or arrest “denies the sex worker the time to innately sense whether a client is a ‘bad trick’,” and that moving to a darker, isolated area “puts her in a more dangerous environment.”
Criminalizing clients will also make it impossible to open safe refuges for sex workers to take clients to, such as Grandma’s House, opened in Vancouver by the Aboriginal sex worker Jamie-Lee Hamilton. Again the Supreme Court was clear: “For some prostitutes, particularly those who are destitute, safe houses such as Grandma’s House may be critical.”
The Conservative government purports to draw inspiration from the “Nordic model” which seeks to criminalize clients but not sex workers. Yet the model is not as successful as the government contends. International health and human rights agencies and experts have all concluded that criminalizing sex work and related activities threaten sex workers’ health and rights. In December 2012, UNAIDS, WHO and the UN Population Fund called for governments to work toward decriminalizing sex work and removing unjust laws and regulations against sex workers.
Last year Human Rights Watch adopted a similar policy for adult, consensual sex, favouring decriminalizing sex work. We came to this decision after decades of research on abuses against sex workers in more than a dozen countries, and working closely with sex worker organizations and their representatives.
We found that where sex work was criminalized, sex workers are reluctant to report violence and abuse. After looking at evidence from around the world, we concluded that criminalizing other aspects of sex work can also lead to harm.
To be sure, decriminalizing sex work would not eliminate all of the risks of violence and exploitation for sex workers. However, decriminalization allows sex workers to organize to prevent and address human rights abuses, including trafficking, and to obtain justice. In New Zealand, where sex work was decriminalized in 2003, authorities have not detected a single case of trafficking in the sex trade despite multiple investigations. Research has found that sex workers’ ability to refuse clients and to report abuse to police had greatly increased under decriminalization.
Far from assisting “exploited persons” or “protecting communities,” this bill is a step backward for human rights, and especially women’s rights, in Canada.
Joe Amon is the director of the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch.
Peter MacKay's prostitution law news conference sowed confusion
A news conference held earlier this month by Justice Minister Peter MacKay to introduce the government's new prostitution law left a number of interested parties scratching their heads.
Lawyers, journalists and groups representing sex workers as well as those who want to help prostitutes get off the streets have spent the last week poring over Bill C-36 looking for clarity on the new law.
Peter MacKay introduced the proposed "protection of communities and exploited persons act" in the House of Commons on June 4, but refused to give reporters an advance briefing on the legislation. They only got a copy of the bill just a few minutes before MacKay showed up to answer journalists' questions.
What followed was a somewhat chaotic news conference where reporters were left to ask questions of a minister who displayed some clear gaps in knowledge about the bill.
The aftermath left experts trying to sort out inconsistencies between the legislation and how the justice minister interpreted it for reporters.
There were three main problems:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pet...law-news-conference-sowed-confusion-1.2679800
A news conference held earlier this month by Justice Minister Peter MacKay to introduce the government's new prostitution law left a number of interested parties scratching their heads.
Lawyers, journalists and groups representing sex workers as well as those who want to help prostitutes get off the streets have spent the last week poring over Bill C-36 looking for clarity on the new law.
Peter MacKay introduced the proposed "protection of communities and exploited persons act" in the House of Commons on June 4, but refused to give reporters an advance briefing on the legislation. They only got a copy of the bill just a few minutes before MacKay showed up to answer journalists' questions.
What followed was a somewhat chaotic news conference where reporters were left to ask questions of a minister who displayed some clear gaps in knowledge about the bill.
The aftermath left experts trying to sort out inconsistencies between the legislation and how the justice minister interpreted it for reporters.
There were three main problems:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pet...law-news-conference-sowed-confusion-1.2679800
I'm willing to bet the Salvation Army is keeping a good chunk of the money to pay themselves (skimming).
Why would you think this? The Harper gov't created the Office of Religious Freedom to funnel millions to its hard-core Christian base.
Which then lobbied the gov't for anti-prostitution legislation.
SexWorker416 @SexWorker416 29s
@MPJoySmith you said 55,000 postcards in the house of commons. http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=joy+smith+postcards … #c36 Stop making stuff up please, that would be cool.
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SexWorker416 @SexWorker416 2m
http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=joy+smith+postcards … or http://www.joysmith.ca/news.asp?newsID=832 …. Isn't making shit up in the house illegal or something? @MPJoySmith #c36
@MPJoySmith you said 55,000 postcards in the house of commons. http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=joy+smith+postcards … #c36 Stop making stuff up please, that would be cool.
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SexWorker416 @SexWorker416 2m
http://openparliament.ca/search/?q=joy+smith+postcards … or http://www.joysmith.ca/news.asp?newsID=832 …. Isn't making shit up in the house illegal or something? @MPJoySmith #c36
The Myth of Trafficking
It’s a classic heroic tale: bad guys abduct an innocent little girl, hero barges into their lair and saves the damsel in distress. It’s the exact story that we get told about human trafficking in the sex industry. Human traffickers steal a woman away and force her to work until the heroes storm the brothel and save her. But what if the ‘damsel’ wasn’t actually in distress? What if there are no bad guys to be found? What if the heroes turn out to be the bad guys?
The rescue industry is big business. The USAID Counter Trafficking in Persons project pulled in a good 7.3 million US dollars. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, one of the largest international organisations against prostitution, offers financing and jobs to countless projects and persons. The Dutch organisation Free a Girl raised more than a hundred thousand euro through their Lock me Up campaign, for example for the Alliance Anti Trafic, which orchestrates rescue missions in which prostitutes are taken from their workplaces and kept locked in government buildings. In itself a worthy goal, of course, trying to rescue women from sexual exploitation. But there are problems.
“It’s as if prostitutes don’t want to be saved,” said a surprised manager of a Rescue Foundation shelter in India. The rescuers had once again made a raid on a brothel, after which the women had been forced into a shelter they weren’t allowed to leave. Again and again women escaped, continually protested their imprisonment in the shelters, and returned to their old workplaces as soon as they were able to make a run for it. It was as if the women were working as prostitutes of their own accord, didn’t view themselves as victims, thought of the rescue missions as threats to their human rights and livelihoods and for the most part felt victimized by the rescue industry.
We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry who are being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women being exploited by traffickers.
- Thailand, Empower Report
In Thailand sex workers refusing to admit after capture that they were human trafficking victims can be detained for months so they can be used as witnesses in other human trafficking cases. They don’t have a right to legal counsel, aren’t allowed to contact their families or other organisations and aren’t allowed to leave. The medical care in such ‘shelters’ (prostitute prisons) is inadequate. There’s no independent institution where the prostitutes can complain, there’s no trial, the rescue industry gets a free pass.
In India, too, women try desperately to stay out of the rescue industry’s clutches. After women had fled the ‘shelters’ (prisons) in Mumbai once again, the High Council ordered an investigation. “The shelters are a living hell” was the conclusion. Women suspected of prostitution, regardless of whether they are guilty (or well, victimized) can be kept prisoner for years, even if they want to leave. They have no right to legal counsel because they are ‘victims’ and there’s no trial. They aren’t allowed to communicate with the world outside the shelter, although often their families are often informed they are sex workers, so that women don’t dare to go home and face this disgrace. They are fed concoctions with insects, worms and gravel in them. Sexual assault by staff members is an everyday occurence, just like forced vaginal exams and abuse. Sanitary amenities are inadequate, women urinate and defecate on the floors, there is almost no medical care. They want out. Women are depressed, fearful and even suicidal. More and more money is spent on guarding these shelters: not for the safety of the women, but to make sure they stay inside and contain the umpteenth try to break out.
Because what you need to understand is, organisations that are part of the rescue industry earn good money for rescuing and rehabilitating enough women in their shelters. The more court cases (if there are any perpetrators they are rarely convicted), the more ‘witnesses’ they ‘protect’ and the more sex workers they ‘offer a chance at a better future’ by having them make products that are sold in the Western world for big bucks (“made by disadvantaged women who were saved from the sex industry!”) the more money the projects rake in. More women means more cash.
In South Korea the bullying by the police has gotten so severe that prostitutes rather killed themselves than be ‘saved’. The United States pressured the government into making a stand against prostitution (‘human trafficking’). Despite protests from the sex workers themselves the police kept arresting johns and pestering the prostitutes. Women used to earn about nine thousand dollar each month, but this shrunk to a good three thousand ever since the police kept invading the brothels. The US and the South Korean government have reached their goal: women are being forced out of prostitution against their will. For 920 USD per month they are allowed to live in a shelter and work for the government, but as usual few prostitutes are happy to perform forced labor while impris… I mean, to be rescued.
RATSW: If a woman agrees to go to work in a brothel but ends up sent to a factory and forced to sew, is that trafficking? Would you rescue her?
Police: No that is not trafficking. We wouldn’t rescue her. That is called an opportunity.
- Empower Report
Size of the human trafficking industry
The rescue industry claims there are millions of people all over the world, particularly women and children, who are being traded like chattel across borders to work as slaves in the sex industry. However, real proof for large-scale human trafficking operations is never found. The rescue industry claims this is because it’s a hidden and shadowy world which makes it hard to find hard data, but even big ‘rescue operations’ don’t succeed in proving the existence of trafficking. Take for instance the British project ‘Pantameter 2′, involving the police forces of the entire United Kingdom (as well as that of the Republic of Ireland and the UK Human Trafficking Centre), in which raids were performed in hundreds (hundreds!) of brothels and massage parlors. Results? No arrests. Not a single arrest was made for trafficking or forced prostitution. Zero. Nada. Dissatisfaction with this result led to the foundation of the Acumen project, explicitly designed to provide proof of human trafficking. The results were disappointing: none of the women had been kidnapped, held against her will or sold. To be considered ‘vulnerable’ in this investigation they had to fulfill one of the criteria, of which working in a brothel was one, which labeled the whole group as ‘vulnerable’. Other criteria were having an economically disadvantaged position (not speaking English, not having had an education), having a disadvantaged social position (being an illegal immigrant for example), being wrongly informed (it was sufficient if you were working in a different city than had been agreed on) or having been abused/having been forced (was found only rarely). Four of these criteria were enough to be considered a ‘victim of human trafficking’ in this report, regardless of whether you actually were a victim of human trafficking. 11% of the women included in the investigation complied to these criteria. Next, this percentage was raised considerably based on preconceptions (“this has to be too low, in reality there must be more women from vulnerable countries”) and the results were presented to the world: thousands of victims of human trafficking in the UK! They hadn’t found even one…
CoMensha is a Dutch foundation that fights human trafficking and puts out reports about the scale of human trafficking in the Netherlands. Their numbers are used by the Justice Ministry’s WODC and by the police. In their annual reports, CoMensha mentions the amount of reports they have received of possible victims of human trafficking, but for convenience’s sake, they abbreviate this structurally to victims of human trafficking. And to be clear: CoMensha does not check or investigate these reports, they are reports of suspicions.
The imprecise (and misleading) language use of CoMensha is copied without scruples by all sorts of official institutes, and this turns the reports of possible victims into actual victims. When the government ordered the Intraval agency to investigate prostitution, their report mentioned “400 victims of human trafficking” instead of the actual 400 reports of possible victims. The real problems in the sex industry are not talked about. Prostitutes in Utrecht are hindered in their work and are denied a place of business ‘for their own good’ and ‘because of suspicions of human trafficking’. Again, the myth of human trafficking is used to put prostitutes in a more dangerous spot, to force the sex industry underground and to take away the rights of sex workers.
In the year 2000, The National Human Trafficking Reporter asked 155 help and special interest organisations how many reports they had had of possible victims of human trafficking, and simply added the numbers these organisations gave them (!) with no correction to account for doubles, then systematically talked about ‘victims’ in the report instead of ‘possible victims’, causing news papers and other media to wrongly state that in the year 2000, there had been 608 victims of human trafficking.
In Cambodia alone there are hundreds of organisations ‘rescuing and rehabilitating’ sex workers’ and it’s suspected there are more activists than victims of trafficking. An audit by the USAID Counter Trafficking in Persons project reported that in 2009, only 12 people had been charged for human trafficking.
The Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) reports how the rescue industry is almost pornographic in their way of using lurid stories about sexual humiliation in order to rake in more funds, even while they have trouble finding any actual victims.is how the organisations explain this failure.
The police is often the perpetrator of violence against sex workers. In countries where prostitution is prohibited, it turns out the police is the number 1 agressor when it comes to violence against sex workers. They have the power to arrest and publicly humilate these women and this power is abused at a large scale. In Cambodia, 70% of the prostitutes who work in a brothel reports having been abused by the police and almost 60% has been raped by the police. The awful thing is, they are hardly able to report this sort of crime for fear they themselves will be arrested or abused further.
Anti-trafficking organisations have put themselves in the idiotic position where they have to use violence and human rights violations against the women and girls they say they are rescuing, so they can prove there has been a crime, in spite of the denial and the uncooperative attitudes of the alleged victims.
Sex work as a profession.
Of course, sex work isn’t always a completely free choice, often women find themselves needing to work in the sex industry because they lack other options. Research by Mai (2009) for example showed that a lot of immigrants in the UK work in the sex industry because that way they can eke out a respectable living for themselves and their families. A lot of immigrants choose sex work to avoid the abuse in other sectors, where long hours and little pay are not uncommon. Many of the sex workers in Cambodia are former seamstresses and clothing factory workers, who prefer the circumstances in the sex industry above those in other sectors.
Almost 95% of women in CSOM research reported the money they earned as the primary motivation to work as a sex worker. About 3.9% of women reported having ever been forced to work. This percentage, in this research and comparable ones, is similar to the percentage of women not in the sex industry who feel forced or abused. Furthermore, 97% (!) of women working as escorts report an increase in self confidence since they started working as a prostitute whereas only 8% of streetwalkers reports this. Another research (Decker, 1979: 166, 174) showed that 75% of escorts feel their lives improved since they started working as a sex worker, 25% says it didn’t change anything, and 0% felt that their lives had gotten worse. Australian research showed that half the protitutes considered their work as one of the major positive aspects to their lives, and 70% said they would choose prostitution again if they had to do their lives over (Woodward et al., 2004: 39).
http://marijkevonk.com/the-myth-of-trafficking/
It’s a classic heroic tale: bad guys abduct an innocent little girl, hero barges into their lair and saves the damsel in distress. It’s the exact story that we get told about human trafficking in the sex industry. Human traffickers steal a woman away and force her to work until the heroes storm the brothel and save her. But what if the ‘damsel’ wasn’t actually in distress? What if there are no bad guys to be found? What if the heroes turn out to be the bad guys?
The rescue industry is big business. The USAID Counter Trafficking in Persons project pulled in a good 7.3 million US dollars. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, one of the largest international organisations against prostitution, offers financing and jobs to countless projects and persons. The Dutch organisation Free a Girl raised more than a hundred thousand euro through their Lock me Up campaign, for example for the Alliance Anti Trafic, which orchestrates rescue missions in which prostitutes are taken from their workplaces and kept locked in government buildings. In itself a worthy goal, of course, trying to rescue women from sexual exploitation. But there are problems.
“It’s as if prostitutes don’t want to be saved,” said a surprised manager of a Rescue Foundation shelter in India. The rescuers had once again made a raid on a brothel, after which the women had been forced into a shelter they weren’t allowed to leave. Again and again women escaped, continually protested their imprisonment in the shelters, and returned to their old workplaces as soon as they were able to make a run for it. It was as if the women were working as prostitutes of their own accord, didn’t view themselves as victims, thought of the rescue missions as threats to their human rights and livelihoods and for the most part felt victimized by the rescue industry.
We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry who are being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women being exploited by traffickers.
- Thailand, Empower Report
In Thailand sex workers refusing to admit after capture that they were human trafficking victims can be detained for months so they can be used as witnesses in other human trafficking cases. They don’t have a right to legal counsel, aren’t allowed to contact their families or other organisations and aren’t allowed to leave. The medical care in such ‘shelters’ (prostitute prisons) is inadequate. There’s no independent institution where the prostitutes can complain, there’s no trial, the rescue industry gets a free pass.
In India, too, women try desperately to stay out of the rescue industry’s clutches. After women had fled the ‘shelters’ (prisons) in Mumbai once again, the High Council ordered an investigation. “The shelters are a living hell” was the conclusion. Women suspected of prostitution, regardless of whether they are guilty (or well, victimized) can be kept prisoner for years, even if they want to leave. They have no right to legal counsel because they are ‘victims’ and there’s no trial. They aren’t allowed to communicate with the world outside the shelter, although often their families are often informed they are sex workers, so that women don’t dare to go home and face this disgrace. They are fed concoctions with insects, worms and gravel in them. Sexual assault by staff members is an everyday occurence, just like forced vaginal exams and abuse. Sanitary amenities are inadequate, women urinate and defecate on the floors, there is almost no medical care. They want out. Women are depressed, fearful and even suicidal. More and more money is spent on guarding these shelters: not for the safety of the women, but to make sure they stay inside and contain the umpteenth try to break out.
Because what you need to understand is, organisations that are part of the rescue industry earn good money for rescuing and rehabilitating enough women in their shelters. The more court cases (if there are any perpetrators they are rarely convicted), the more ‘witnesses’ they ‘protect’ and the more sex workers they ‘offer a chance at a better future’ by having them make products that are sold in the Western world for big bucks (“made by disadvantaged women who were saved from the sex industry!”) the more money the projects rake in. More women means more cash.
In South Korea the bullying by the police has gotten so severe that prostitutes rather killed themselves than be ‘saved’. The United States pressured the government into making a stand against prostitution (‘human trafficking’). Despite protests from the sex workers themselves the police kept arresting johns and pestering the prostitutes. Women used to earn about nine thousand dollar each month, but this shrunk to a good three thousand ever since the police kept invading the brothels. The US and the South Korean government have reached their goal: women are being forced out of prostitution against their will. For 920 USD per month they are allowed to live in a shelter and work for the government, but as usual few prostitutes are happy to perform forced labor while impris… I mean, to be rescued.
RATSW: If a woman agrees to go to work in a brothel but ends up sent to a factory and forced to sew, is that trafficking? Would you rescue her?
Police: No that is not trafficking. We wouldn’t rescue her. That is called an opportunity.
- Empower Report
Size of the human trafficking industry
The rescue industry claims there are millions of people all over the world, particularly women and children, who are being traded like chattel across borders to work as slaves in the sex industry. However, real proof for large-scale human trafficking operations is never found. The rescue industry claims this is because it’s a hidden and shadowy world which makes it hard to find hard data, but even big ‘rescue operations’ don’t succeed in proving the existence of trafficking. Take for instance the British project ‘Pantameter 2′, involving the police forces of the entire United Kingdom (as well as that of the Republic of Ireland and the UK Human Trafficking Centre), in which raids were performed in hundreds (hundreds!) of brothels and massage parlors. Results? No arrests. Not a single arrest was made for trafficking or forced prostitution. Zero. Nada. Dissatisfaction with this result led to the foundation of the Acumen project, explicitly designed to provide proof of human trafficking. The results were disappointing: none of the women had been kidnapped, held against her will or sold. To be considered ‘vulnerable’ in this investigation they had to fulfill one of the criteria, of which working in a brothel was one, which labeled the whole group as ‘vulnerable’. Other criteria were having an economically disadvantaged position (not speaking English, not having had an education), having a disadvantaged social position (being an illegal immigrant for example), being wrongly informed (it was sufficient if you were working in a different city than had been agreed on) or having been abused/having been forced (was found only rarely). Four of these criteria were enough to be considered a ‘victim of human trafficking’ in this report, regardless of whether you actually were a victim of human trafficking. 11% of the women included in the investigation complied to these criteria. Next, this percentage was raised considerably based on preconceptions (“this has to be too low, in reality there must be more women from vulnerable countries”) and the results were presented to the world: thousands of victims of human trafficking in the UK! They hadn’t found even one…
CoMensha is a Dutch foundation that fights human trafficking and puts out reports about the scale of human trafficking in the Netherlands. Their numbers are used by the Justice Ministry’s WODC and by the police. In their annual reports, CoMensha mentions the amount of reports they have received of possible victims of human trafficking, but for convenience’s sake, they abbreviate this structurally to victims of human trafficking. And to be clear: CoMensha does not check or investigate these reports, they are reports of suspicions.
The imprecise (and misleading) language use of CoMensha is copied without scruples by all sorts of official institutes, and this turns the reports of possible victims into actual victims. When the government ordered the Intraval agency to investigate prostitution, their report mentioned “400 victims of human trafficking” instead of the actual 400 reports of possible victims. The real problems in the sex industry are not talked about. Prostitutes in Utrecht are hindered in their work and are denied a place of business ‘for their own good’ and ‘because of suspicions of human trafficking’. Again, the myth of human trafficking is used to put prostitutes in a more dangerous spot, to force the sex industry underground and to take away the rights of sex workers.
In the year 2000, The National Human Trafficking Reporter asked 155 help and special interest organisations how many reports they had had of possible victims of human trafficking, and simply added the numbers these organisations gave them (!) with no correction to account for doubles, then systematically talked about ‘victims’ in the report instead of ‘possible victims’, causing news papers and other media to wrongly state that in the year 2000, there had been 608 victims of human trafficking.
In Cambodia alone there are hundreds of organisations ‘rescuing and rehabilitating’ sex workers’ and it’s suspected there are more activists than victims of trafficking. An audit by the USAID Counter Trafficking in Persons project reported that in 2009, only 12 people had been charged for human trafficking.
The Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) reports how the rescue industry is almost pornographic in their way of using lurid stories about sexual humiliation in order to rake in more funds, even while they have trouble finding any actual victims.is how the organisations explain this failure.
The police is often the perpetrator of violence against sex workers. In countries where prostitution is prohibited, it turns out the police is the number 1 agressor when it comes to violence against sex workers. They have the power to arrest and publicly humilate these women and this power is abused at a large scale. In Cambodia, 70% of the prostitutes who work in a brothel reports having been abused by the police and almost 60% has been raped by the police. The awful thing is, they are hardly able to report this sort of crime for fear they themselves will be arrested or abused further.
Anti-trafficking organisations have put themselves in the idiotic position where they have to use violence and human rights violations against the women and girls they say they are rescuing, so they can prove there has been a crime, in spite of the denial and the uncooperative attitudes of the alleged victims.
Sex work as a profession.
Of course, sex work isn’t always a completely free choice, often women find themselves needing to work in the sex industry because they lack other options. Research by Mai (2009) for example showed that a lot of immigrants in the UK work in the sex industry because that way they can eke out a respectable living for themselves and their families. A lot of immigrants choose sex work to avoid the abuse in other sectors, where long hours and little pay are not uncommon. Many of the sex workers in Cambodia are former seamstresses and clothing factory workers, who prefer the circumstances in the sex industry above those in other sectors.
Almost 95% of women in CSOM research reported the money they earned as the primary motivation to work as a sex worker. About 3.9% of women reported having ever been forced to work. This percentage, in this research and comparable ones, is similar to the percentage of women not in the sex industry who feel forced or abused. Furthermore, 97% (!) of women working as escorts report an increase in self confidence since they started working as a prostitute whereas only 8% of streetwalkers reports this. Another research (Decker, 1979: 166, 174) showed that 75% of escorts feel their lives improved since they started working as a sex worker, 25% says it didn’t change anything, and 0% felt that their lives had gotten worse. Australian research showed that half the protitutes considered their work as one of the major positive aspects to their lives, and 70% said they would choose prostitution again if they had to do their lives over (Woodward et al., 2004: 39).
http://marijkevonk.com/the-myth-of-trafficking/
http://therealpornwikileaks.com/selling-sex-dangerous-five-years-sex-purchase-ban/
Since the law against buying sex was introduced in 2009, the 1520 sex-customers have been fined by police, according to figures from the Police Directorate.
During the same period, over 400 apartments in Oslo where prostitutes live and sell sex have been closed after the landlord has been threatened with prosecution as a pimp. Thus, sex workers are put out on the street.
When the law banning the purchase of sex was introduced, the clear assumption was that it would not affect the women who sold sex. In late June, the government receives an evaluation of how the law has actually turned out.
VG has contacted the largest organizations that aid sex workers, and their conclusion is unambiguous:
The five year ban on buying sex has led to harsher violence from clients. Robbers and violent men target prostitutes. The women do not trust the police dare not go to them.
- More customers think they can do “bad things” with us, three prostitutes advised Nadheim.
* The women are afraid to report because they need to enter their address. They often share apartment with other sex workers and fear that the police will go to the apartment undercover if they state their address.
* The market is poor. The customers know that women are under economic strain and demand sex without a condom.
* The women feel that they have been criminalized by the Sale of Goods Act have a very strained relationship with the police.
- “The police are after us to take customers. The law should not go beyond the girls, but it does,” says one of the female prostitutes.
The Council has asked the police to submit reviews, and use Nadheim address.
- “We proposed this in a meeting with management at the central police station in the fall, but have not received any feedback,” reports Nadheim leader Olav Lægdene.
- “We recorded cases of violence over a period of time: More than 100 cases of violence and robbery from the customer against prostitutes were not reviewed,” he continued.
Director at PRO-center Bjorg Norli, say they have seen the result of sex-purchase law is that women who sell sex feel more insecure.
- “We are concerned that fewer women than ever wish to report the violence they suffer,” says Norli.
- “This is a very marginalized group.We also see that the assailants and robbers deliberately chooses to target prostitutes, because they know that few of them dare to report the violence,” she continues.
- Confidence in the police has long been low among those who sell sex. But over the past five years it has become even more frayed.
Administrative responsibility for PION, Astrid Renland, says that sex workers they have contact with say that they feel criminalized and chased by police.
- Police have used methods such as “Operation Husløs”, where they claim to be customers map their sex sales and threatening landlords with pimping charges, says Renland.
- “Before the law came there was much talk about combating traffickers, and that the law should be preventive against buying sex without merchants were affected. But in practice it has become more insecure and less safety for sex workers,” she continues.
http://therealpornwikileaks.com/selling-sex-dangerous-five-years-sex-purchase-ban/
Since the law against buying sex was introduced in 2009, the 1520 sex-customers have been fined by police, according to figures from the Police Directorate.
During the same period, over 400 apartments in Oslo where prostitutes live and sell sex have been closed after the landlord has been threatened with prosecution as a pimp. Thus, sex workers are put out on the street.
When the law banning the purchase of sex was introduced, the clear assumption was that it would not affect the women who sold sex. In late June, the government receives an evaluation of how the law has actually turned out.
VG has contacted the largest organizations that aid sex workers, and their conclusion is unambiguous:
The five year ban on buying sex has led to harsher violence from clients. Robbers and violent men target prostitutes. The women do not trust the police dare not go to them.
- More customers think they can do “bad things” with us, three prostitutes advised Nadheim.
* The women are afraid to report because they need to enter their address. They often share apartment with other sex workers and fear that the police will go to the apartment undercover if they state their address.
* The market is poor. The customers know that women are under economic strain and demand sex without a condom.
* The women feel that they have been criminalized by the Sale of Goods Act have a very strained relationship with the police.
- “The police are after us to take customers. The law should not go beyond the girls, but it does,” says one of the female prostitutes.
The Council has asked the police to submit reviews, and use Nadheim address.
- “We proposed this in a meeting with management at the central police station in the fall, but have not received any feedback,” reports Nadheim leader Olav Lægdene.
- “We recorded cases of violence over a period of time: More than 100 cases of violence and robbery from the customer against prostitutes were not reviewed,” he continued.
Director at PRO-center Bjorg Norli, say they have seen the result of sex-purchase law is that women who sell sex feel more insecure.
- “We are concerned that fewer women than ever wish to report the violence they suffer,” says Norli.
- “This is a very marginalized group.We also see that the assailants and robbers deliberately chooses to target prostitutes, because they know that few of them dare to report the violence,” she continues.
- Confidence in the police has long been low among those who sell sex. But over the past five years it has become even more frayed.
Administrative responsibility for PION, Astrid Renland, says that sex workers they have contact with say that they feel criminalized and chased by police.
- Police have used methods such as “Operation Husløs”, where they claim to be customers map their sex sales and threatening landlords with pimping charges, says Renland.
- “Before the law came there was much talk about combating traffickers, and that the law should be preventive against buying sex without merchants were affected. But in practice it has become more insecure and less safety for sex workers,” she continues.
http://therealpornwikileaks.com/selling-sex-dangerous-five-years-sex-purchase-ban/
