World P4P News

China's punitive laws and policing practices against sex workers are leading to serious abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report published today. These abuses include police violence, arbitrary detention of up to two years in re-education through labor and custody and education centers, and coercive HIV testing. There are an estimated four to six million sex workers in China, the overwhelming majority of them women.

The report, Swept Away: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China , documents abuses by the police against female sex workers in Beijing, including torture, beatings, physical assaults, arbitrary detentions, and fines, as well as a failure to investigate crimes against sex workers by clients, bosses, and state agents. The report also documents abuses by public health agencies, such as coercive HIV testing, privacy infringements, and mistreatment by health officials.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch said:

In China, the police often act as if by engaging in sex work, women had forfeited their rights. The government must abandon its repressive laws against sex workers, discipline abusive police, and end the suppression of sex workers rights advocates.

The Chinese government has allowed the unchecked growth of the sex industry in recent decades, with millions of women turning to sex work as a way of earning a living. Yet the government maintains officially a blanket ban on sex work, viewing it as an ugly social phenomenon that goes against socialist spiritual civilization, and treating it as a misdemeanor punishable by fines or short-term detention.

During periodic anti-prostitution drives, often lasting several weeks and linked to larger strike hard campaigns against crime, police repeatedly raid entertainment venues, hair salons, massage parlors, and other spaces where sex work occurs, detaining large numbers of women suspected of being sex workers. Sex workers are most at risk of abuses such as police brutality and arbitrary detention during these drives. Domestic activists working on rights for Chinese sex workers have also denounced these police raids.

Chinese police can also send suspected sex workers, without due process or a trial, for up to two years' detention in a re-education through labor camp or so-called custody and education centers. While the government announced in January 2013 that it would reform re-education through labor, there has been no similar announcement for the estimated 183 custody and education centers, holding more than 15,000 inmates, most of whom are women. Both institutions constitute forms of arbitrary detention under international law, Human Rights Watch said, since they allow people to be deprived of their liberty without due process of law.

Human Rights Watch calls on the Chinese government to enact legislation to remove criminal and administrative sanctions against voluntary, consensual sex work and related offenses such as solicitation. Human Rights Watch also called for an end to the periodic anti-prostitution mobilization campaigns that have generated severe abuses against women engaging in sex work.

Abuses by law-enforcement agencies deter sex workers from seeking help from the police when they are victims of crime, or from public health services when they are in need of assistance, said Richardson. This makes them more vulnerable to abuses and exploitation. If China is serious about protecting and promoting women's rights, it cannot ignore the millions of women who engage in sex work.

The Invisible Men Project aims to selectively reveal what some men who visit sex workers say about the women involved.

PunterNet is a website forum where men can comment on and review sex workers. It includes warnings about reporting any potentially underage or trafficked women, and it offers sex workers a right of reply to bad reviews.

Now, The Invisible Men Project is gathering a selection of posts from Punternet to ask a simple question: never mind the debates about the ethics of sex workers themselves, what do you think of the men who pay them? As the site puts it: Without seeking to prove, disprove or debate choice on the part of the women described, we invite you to consider: what do you think of his choice?

However the comments being published are clearly cherry picked to support the anti-sex work cause.

A pub in Singapore's famous sexy nightlife centre, Orchard Towers has got in trouble with the police.

Managers Ng Kian Boon and Ridzawi Ali were fined $22,000 each. They had pleaded guilty to four charges of abetting the pub owner to receive the earnings from prostitution and to one charge of assisting him to manage a brothel. The owner and three other employees will face the court later.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Joshua Lai said two police officers in plain clothes went to the now-defunct Famous Hot Models pub on the third floor of Orchard Towers at 1am on May 25 last year after a tip-off.

Pretending to be customers, they were joined by three Filipino hostesses, who told them that oral sex was available in the pub's three karaoke rooms at a cost of $182. If a customer wanted to have sex, he would have to pay the pub $268 for two hours of the woman's company. Other police officers then moved in and arrested 26 Filipino women, aged 19 to 31.

The hostess' job scope included encouraging customers to buy her lady drinks. Prices ranged from $30 to $120 for each drink - for every $10, she would earn $3. The women were also urged to provide sexual services to earn more money - keeping half of what they were paid.

Legislation to criminalise the purchase of sex will be introduced to the Dail tomorrow. The Criminal Law Sexual Offences Bill, to be introduced by Independent TD Thomas Pringle, sets out to impose harsh criminal sanctions on those who pay for sex.

Persecution of men via the so called Swedish model is being advocated in Ireland by the Turn off the Red Light Campaign. The campaign, is endorsed by 68 organisations including various gender extremist groups eg Ruhama, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Labour Party and Barnardos.

Pringle claimed:

[The Bill] will reduce the demand for sexual services, thereby reducing the incidence of prostitution in society. It will create a situation that will remove the attractiveness of prostitution and trafficking from organised criminal elements by creating the risk for purchasers of sexual services to be prosecuted with the element of 'name and shame' acting as a deterrent.

Penalties The Bill provides for an ascending scale of penalties, from a fixed-notice fine of EUR500 for first-time offenders, to a EUR4,000 fine and/or four-week jail sentence for repeat offenders.

Germany's center-right governing coalition has agreed to enact restrictions on sex work in the country.

Members of the coalition -- made up of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) -- say that an agreement over an appropriate set of regulations has nearly been reached.

Prostitution is legal in Germany, but the coalition plans to toughen criminal penalties against human trafficking and more strictly restrict the commercial activities of brothels.

In future, brothel operators will need special authorization to open such an establishment. Moreover, authorities will be required to enforce hygienic standards and operators will be screened for prior criminal offences.

There is still resistance, however, from Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP), who wants to prevent harsher criminal laws in the sex industry.

Costa Rica is fast becoming a top sex-tourism destination where prostitution is not only legal, it's embraced.

The Costa Rican government, of course, would prefer that its wedge of the Central American isthmus not be so well regarded among American men trolling for sex. The tourist board is much more enthusiastic about their beaches, rain forests, and volcanoes, and the country's official slogan---no artificial ingredients---would seem to have nothing at all to do with picking up prostitutes in bars. True, every horny American who comes down here is renting a hotel room, eating in restaurants, probably drinking, maybe gambling, and definitely paying the $26 departure tax on his way out; at least some of the money he's spending on sex goes back into the local economy. But what self-respecting country wants to shill for those dollars? You might be sure that this type of tourist are not wanted here, says one Costa Rican official. We only want the people that want to spend a 'Pura Vida' time.

Yet the whoremongers came in droves anyway. And by the early 1990s, they'd branded Costa Rica with a reputation as a sex haven---a reputation that stuck and then exploded near the end of the century. Why that happened isn't complicated. For one thing, prostitution is legal, or at least isn't illegal: The business isn't taxed or regulated like, say, casinos or bars, but there is no law against an adult selling his or her body for cash. So you're not going to come down to San Jose' and get busted by an undercover cop. Prostitution is also indigenously rampant and culturally, if quietly, acceptable---70 percent of those who pay for sex are locals---so you don't feel all that awkward with your arm around a whore.

...Read the full article [part 1] + article [part 2]