Nightlife Tales

New regulations supposedly aimed at the hygiene of sex toys have irked Red Light District window operators, who are now appealing the rules change by Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan.

As part of the new licensing conditions, window landlords are responsible for ensuring that sex toys maintain proper hygiene standards rather than the sex workers who use them.

Under the united front Wallen Ondernemers Prostitutie (WOP) window operators say the responsibility for the cleanliness of sex toys should rest with the people who rent the windows, and they have filed an official complaint with the city over the change, according to the Telegraaf.

In July 2013, new regulations imposed much stricter rules on window operators across the Red Light District. To receive a license, operators must ensure that each window is adequately supplied with clean towels, condoms and disinfectant soap, with checks carried out eight times annually. The addition of sex toy hygiene proved to be too much for operators, they said.

Finnish authorities are in general backing the proposal that buying sex from a victim of pimping or sex trafficking would become illegal, even if the buyer is unaware of the sex worker's circumstances. A court could sentence a person paying for sex if it considers that there was reason to suspect that pimping or human trafficking was involved.

The proposal was sparked by a previous ruling by the Supreme Court in 2012 when the court dismissed the charges against a young man suspected of abusing a victim of sex trafficking. According to the court, the accused could not have known for certain that the Estonian woman was a victim of pimping, even though there were many circumstances that pointed to that assumption.

The Supreme Court's ruling raised the threshold for sentencing a person paying for sex so high that the Ministry of Justice decided that a law reform was necessary. The changes would mean that sex workers' customers are liable to prosecution if there is reason to suspect pimping or sex trafficking. The maximum sentence for this offence would go up to a year.

The proposed reform has garnered support from the National Police Board, the Tukinainen support centre for rape victims, the Finnish Bar Association and the Ombudsman for Equality.

The world's first drive-thru brothels has been deemed a success by Swiss social services, a year after being created.

The drive-in sex boxes were installed in Zurich last year, offering sex workers a safer place to provide their services rather than the street. Set up on the edge of the city, the facility provides bathrooms, laundry and even has its own security.

The creation cost the government 2million Euros to build and has risen in popularity over the last 12 months. Around 30 to 40 women ply their trade there each night.

Zurich authorities believe the idea has been extremely positive and want prostitution, which has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, to continue running safely. A statement from social services read:

The new regulation of street prostitution has attained its objectives of protecting the population and the sex workers. The first year of the service has been positive.

The ruling coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats in Germany has agreed on restrictions to the Prostitution Act of 2002.

In the future, sex workers will have to register with the authorities, the owners of brothels will have to submit to reliability checks, and flat rate sex and gang bang parties are going to be outlawed.

Manuela Schwesig , Federal Minister for Family Affairs (Social Democrats), declared that the new regulations meant that for the first time, there would be clear rules for legal prostitution in Germany that will protect the women .

Social Democrats (SPD) and Conservatives (CDU/CSU) still negotiate on other items, including a minimum age for sex workers of 21. Conservatives want to raise the minimum age for sex workers from 18 to 21.

A law demanding mandatory registration would harm the women, criticised Fabienne Freymadl, political spokeswoman of the Professional Organisation for Erotic and Sexual Services (BesD) , where sex workers in Germany are organised{

Especially sex workers who work on a part-time basis do not want to register due to the risk that their data may be passed on to third parties and women could be outed for their stigmatised professionl. If women experienced assaults, they could henceforward not report them to the police anymore, if they weren't registered with the authorities.

The BesD is also critical of the planned statutory permission requirements and reliability checks for brothel owners. According to the new regulations, brothel owners with criminal records can be barred from operating brothels. However, an exemption from the statutory permission requirements is planned, if individual persons sell sex in private apartments. Freymadl said:

Outlawing flat rate sex and so-called gang bang parties showed how moralising the debate actually was. Outlawing certain business models and practices, which the public perceived as particularly demeaning, contributed nothing to fight forced prostitution , since criminals wouldn't heed such bans anyway.

The remaining points of contention regarding the reform of the prostitution law are to be clarified in the early fall. The plan of the Conservatives to punish customers of forced prostitutes remains controversial. Critics fear that even less customers would then provide tip-offs to the police about forced prostitution , should they involuntarily encounter such women.

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) and the Freedom Network (USA) have condemned a new bill, introduced into the US House of Representatives by Congressman Hultgren, which seeks to put pressure on countries that "do not prohibit the purchase of commercial sex acts".

If passed, bill H.R.4703 will amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to demand that the State Department take a country's prostitution laws into consideration when determining its rankings in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Placement in the lowest tier of the Trafficking in Persons Report can trigger sanctions including the reduction or loss of non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance.

GAATW and the Freedom Network believe that this move is not about preventing human trafficking or protecting its victims. Under the guise of addressing trafficking in persons, the amendment instead seeks to include efforts to eradicate prostitution. Creating such a strong link between prostitution and trafficking in persons is not uncommon but it is mistaken. GAATW has documented the harm done to sex workers, migrants and to people who have been trafficked by anti-trafficking laws, policies, programmes and initiatives that conflate the two.

There is no evidence that criminalising or otherwise penalising sex workers' clients has reduced either trafficking in persons or sex work. International law on trafficking in persons makes a distinction between prostitution and trafficking. The USA's international anti-trafficking work too makes this distinction plain, as several countries in the top tier of the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report -- i.e. those countries who meet the minimum standards for addressing trafficking -- indeed do not criminalise sex work. If anything, we can look to the 14 years of the Trafficking in Persons Report as the evidentiary link that sex work and trafficking are not connected.

The text of bill H.R.4703 is available here . The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Sex work must be decriminalised if the world is to stand a chance of controlling the Aids pandemic, say scientists contributing to a series of research papers in the Lancet medical journal.

Sex workers, whether female, male or transgender, are subject to repression, violence and abuse even at the hands of those who are supposed to uphold the law, according to the series of seven research papers presented at the International Aids Conference in Melbourne, Australia. Fear of the police and other authorities, as well as the abuse itself, prevents sex workers protecting themselves from HIV infection.

Studies in Canada, India and Kenya contain testimony from sex workers who report having condoms confiscated by police, who regard them as evidence of crimes, and being subjected to physical or sexual violence. Both the sex workers and their clients are put at risk of infection by this.

Governments and the police should uphold the human rights of all people, including sex workers, say the series authors. Reducing sexual violence by clients and abusers could reduce HIV infection rates by around a fifth in both high- and low-income settings, they say, and getting more sex workers on antiretroviral treatment for HIV would reduce the amount of active virus in their bodies and cut the rate of new infections by a third. But decriminalisation of sex work would be the preventative measure with the biggest impact, they say. Across all settings, it would reduce HIV infections by 33% to 46% over the next decade.

Lancet editor Richard Horton and senior executive editor Pamela Das said in a commentary:

We might prefer to think that sex and money were unrelated, that sex was somehow immune from the transactions so common elsewhere in our lives. But why should this exception be so? And why should we condemn and criminalise the exchange of money for sex, especially if the severely adverse conditions we create for such exchange hurt women and men, and often fatally so?

Sex work is part of the human story. Accepting and embracing sex work -- supporting those engaged in sex work to protect their health and bodily integrity and autonomy -- should be our humane, as well as our pragmatic, approach to the reality of our human lives. And to our common efforts to defeat Aids.

Canada's government is fast-tracking a nasty Bill C-36 to criminalise people who buy sex. Here's a glance at what the government is proposing, and what critics say about the changes.

1. Going after the buyers

The bill criminalizes the buying of sex -- or obtain[ing] for consideration... the sexual services of a person. The penalties include jail time -- up to five years in some cases -- and minimum cash fines that go up after a first offence.

2. What's a sexual service ?

The bill doesn't say, meaning it would likely be up to a court to decide where the line was drawn. A government legal brief, submitted to the committee as it considered the bill, says the courts have found lap-dancing and masturbation in a massage parlour? count as a sexual service or prostitution, but not stripping or the production of pornography.

3. What about sex workers?

They also face penalties under the bill, though the government says it is largely trying to go after the buyers of sex. Under the bill, it would be illegal for a sex worker to discuss the sale of sex in certain areas -- a government amendment Tuesday appears set to reduce what areas would be protected -- and it would also be illegal for a person to get a material benefit from the sale of sexual services by anyone other than themselves. Some critics have warned that latter clause could, for instance, prevent sex workers from working together, which some do to improve safety.

4. What about those who work with sex workers?

Anyone who receives a financial or other material benefit, knowing that it is obtained by or derived directly or indirectly from the sale of a sexual service, faces up to 10 years in prison. This excludes those who have a legitimate living arrangement with a sex worker, those who receives the benefit as a result of a legal or moral obligation of the sex worker, those who sell the sex worker a service or good on the same terms to the general public, and those who offer a private service to sex workers but do so for a fee proportionate to the service and so long as they do not counsel or encourage sex work.

5. Can sex workers advertise their services?

This is a key plank of the bill, which makes it a crime to knowingly advertise an offer to provide sexual services for consideration, or money. This could potentially include newspapers, such as weekly publications that include personal ads from sex workers, or websites that publish similar ads. Justice Minister Peter MacKay appears to believe the ban could go after such publications. It affects all forms of advertising, including online. And anything that enables or furthers what we think is an inherently dangerous practice of prostitution will be subject to prosecution, but the courts will determine what fits that definition, he told reporters after speaking to the committee July 7. This has been welcomed by some, including Janine Benedet, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia who supports the bill overall, though she called for some changes. I didn't actually expect to see this advertising provision in this bill but I would say it's actually a really important step, to say that kind of profiteering needs to stop, she said. ]

6. Can anyone still advertise the sale of sex?

Yes -- sex workers themselves. The bill includes an exemption that says no one will be prosecuted for an advertisement of their own sexual services, though platforms that actually knowingly run the ads may face prosecution.

...

10. What's the status of the bill?

Canada's current laws, struck down by the Court, officially expire in December, and the government has pledged to pass Bill C-36 by then.

Bangladesh's oldest brothel has been shut down following pressure from local religious leaders and politicians amid rising extremism in the Muslim-majority country.

More than 750 prostitutes in Tangail city were forced out of a cluster of houses that made up the 200-year-old Kandapara brothel after the dwelling's owners ordered them shut.

District police chief Saleh Mohammad Tanvir said the owners made the decision after Muslim religious leaders and civil activists staged a march last week demanding the eviction of the sex workers. He said:

On Sunday, the house owners of the brothel issued a notice ordering all the sex workers to leave the brothel. They left without any protest.

Monowara Begum, who heads a sex-workers group at Kandapara, accused the local mayor of using violent intimidation to evict the sex workers. She said:

He (the mayor) sent dozens of young men to the brothel on Saturday. Armed with sticks, they told us that we have only one hour to leave the place or they would burn down the brothel with kerosene. After that owners started dismantling their houses, she said.

The brothel's more than 773 girls were panicked. As they were leaving, their belongings such as televisions, fridges and furniture, which were loaded on seven trucks, were looted by local people.

At least seven Indonesian red-light districts in Malang regency, East Java, are to be closed down by the end of November.

Malang administration secretary Abdul Malik said that the prostitution centers would be given a deadline of November 28, 2014 to shut down business, the date of the regency's 1254th anniversary. The closures will be a gift for the regency's anniversary, Malik said.

The seven red-light districts to be closed are Suko in Sumberpucung district, Kebobang in Wonosari, Kalikudu in Pujon, Slorok in Kromengan, Girun in Gondanglegi, Embong Miring in Ngantang and Sendangbiru in Sumbermanjing Wetan district.

Malik said the buildings of the red-light districts would be converted into new businesses.

Twenty-nine women, reported to be prostitutes, were executed inside the apartment where they worked in the Zayouna neighborhood on Baghdad's east side. Two men also were found dead inside, one of them the reported pimp. Many of those killed had gunshot wounds to the head. Police found one woman's body inside a cupboard where she had tried to hide. Photographs of the gruesome spectacle have circulated widely on the Internet.

Officially, Iraq's Ministry of the Interior is still investigating the crime, but many Iraqis believe it's clear who is responsible. They say the killing was carried out by members of a local Shia militia, religious extremists whose armed members both cooperate and compete with the government for control of the area where the killing occurred.

Written on the door of the building was the warning: This is the fate of any prostitution. The carnage and the inscription are read by Iraqis as a militia's show of power, declaring authority in the area, and warning locals that what the militia deem moral crimes can be punished with summary execution.

No one will name the group responsible for the slaughter but privately Iraqis say that it was likely carried out by Asaib Ahl al-Haq, an Iranian-backed Shia militia group that operates openly in Zayouna. There is no proof that it is responsible for the killing Saturday, but few Iraqis doubt that it is capable of such violence.

Ostensibly keen to be seen to be making an effort to rid South Korean of its vices and corruption, South Korean Prime Minister, Ms. Park Geun-Hye, has implemented a national job scheme offered to those with a simple penchant for nosiness, or possibly an overzealous sense of nationalism.

Park has expanded a policy in which citizens act as professional whistleblowers or bounty hunters for organised crime . Under the legislative interpretation of Korea's current sex industry legislation, virtually aspect of sex work falls under the definition of organised crime . Park has failed to specifically identify whether the sex industry will fall under her organised crime whistleblower program; however, given that the outsourcing of law enforcement has also been something of a boon for local governments and administration with, local administrators claiming that They can save money on hiring (police) officers, and that the fines imposed on offenders generally outstrip the rewards paid to informers. For example, the reward for reporting illegal garbage dumping is about $40, whilst the fine is about 10 times as much.

Currently the professional-do-gooders for money community , as they refer to themselves, have concentrated on anti-social crimes such as dumping garbage at camping sites, coin-operated coffee machines in Internet sites lacking proper sanitary tags, and publically disposing of cigarette butts inappropriately. However, as more South Koreans are attracted to the seemingly well-paid and romanticism of the self made spy , whistleblower or bounty hunter industry, some are taking on specialities; for example, professional spies who sell information about the sex industry to the government are known within their community as seongparazzi .

As for the Park regime's new plan to stamp out organised crime, Korean sex workers have made the following statement:

Prostitution is already illegal in Korea. That is why sex workers cannot ask for protection during their work. Rather than protecting sex workers, the police violate their human rights during crackdowns. Amidst all this, this new policy will pose a new threat to the survival of sex workers. With bounty hunters at large, sex workers will have to hide in the shadows where there is neither safety nor a regular income. This policy is also dangerous as it may direct public frustration at the Park administration's incompetency, incapacity and dishonesty towards sex workers by defining sex workers as the delinquent others. Stigmatising minorities as criminals and putting them into dangerous circumstances represents nothing short of a witch hunt.

To most of male, female and transgender sex workers, sex work is a matter of survival. Before asking sex workers why would they go into this business, the government should reflect on the circumstances that renders sex work inevitable. A weak social safety net, prejudices within Korean society, and the attitude of Korean society towards poverty should be held accountable. Sex workers constantly have to be afraid and will have no access to workers' rights and human rights as long as prostitution is deemed a crime and prostitutes as filthy.

We, the members of Giant Girls, the Network for Sex Workers' Rights, express our outrage over this incompetent and irresponsible government announcement and declare that we will take every measure against the situation.

The International Committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) has welcomed the withdrawal of the criminalisation of clients of sex workers from the law proposal that will be presented to the French Senate.

In the words of STRASS , the French Union of Sex Workers:

the Senate Select Committee has taken the time to organise real hearings, to listen to all points of view, including those of national and international health and human rights organisations and considered the evidence of the negative impact of the criminalisation of clients of sex workers. Above all, the Senate Select Committee has taken into account the voices of those first concerned, sex workers themselves.

This is a great victory for sex workers who have fought tirelessly against this law proposal not only in France but in every country where this dangerous approach has threatened our livelihood and our safety.

ICRSE hope that this victory in France will inspire sex workers to keep fighting for their rights and for organisations and policy-makers supporting the failed Swedish Model to really consider the growing amount of evidence against it, to follow the steps of the French Senate Select Committee and to abandon the criminalisation of clients in favour of the only human rights based approach to sex work: full decriminalisation.

How many times have we been told that there is going to be an increase in the number of sex workers operating (and a related increase in human trafficking) whenever a major sporting event is organised? Panic over an increase in sex work and trafficking surrounded all three of the recent World Cups in Germany, South Africa and now Brazil as well as the London 2012 Olympics. Next month Glasgow, Scotland plays host to the 20th Commonwealth Games and the same stories are surfacing as can be seen from this recent newspaper article in the Glasgow Herald:

With just under three months to go until the Glasgow 2014 Games, a strategy designed to tackle sex trafficking and prostitution is being put in place, together with a campaign aimed at changing attitudes around violence against women. High-profile sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, have historically resulted in a spike in sex crimes because countries experience a large increase in population as athletes, officials and spectators visit host cities involved. MSPs raised fears last year that the Games, which are expected to attract one million visitors to Glasgow, would lead to an influx of victims of human trafficking in Scotland.

These scare stories are finally going to be subjected to some scrutiny in an academic study run by Dr Kate Hardy of the University of Leeds called Sex in the stadium: labour and coercion in the sex industry and the Commonwealth Games . As well as exploring whether there is any truth in the allegation that high-profile sporting events result in an increase in sex work this study is also focussed on exploring the impact that these scare campaigns have on sex workers. Dr Hardy explains:

This research examines the relationship between the Commonwealth Games and working conditions in the sex industry in Glasgow. The focus is on changes to the safety and well-being of sex workers during the games and any changes to the industry as a result of it. It is being undertaken in response to arguments that coercion and trafficking increase during events of this type and to evidence from sex workers in London that they were displaced from long term working premises during the Olympic Games in 2012. The ultimate aim is to influence policy in relation to 'mega-events' in order to protect sex workers' working conditions in the short and long term.

The research is being undertaken in full partnership with sex worker rights organisations in Scotland, the Sex Worker Open University and SCOT-PEP (Scottish Prostitutes Education Project). Sex workers will be trained as peer researchers and will identify and interview other sex workers about their experiences of working in the lead up to, during and after the Commonwealth Games. Despite the many newspaper articles and blog posts written about the issue of sex work and sporting events this study will be the first that examines it from an evidence-based perspective and is very much welcomed.

A pub called Harry's Bar in Vaxjo in south central Sweden had a policy where they refused entry to "Asian-looking women". This policy was put in place on the grounds that the pub were trying to prevent prostitution from taking place on their premises as the pub owner had been informed by the police that prostitution was taking place in the area and that Asian women were involved.

A group of Asian women (who were not sex workers) and who had been refused entry to this particular pub in 2012 pursued a claim for race discrimination against the pub owner and six members of the security staff. Talking about the experience one of the women, Merlita Malmstrom, said it was a traumatic experience. No one should be treated the way they treated us.

The case was heard by the Vaxjo District Court in 2013. While prosecutors believed strongly that the actions of the pub had amounted to unlawful discrimination the court disagreed and the women lost their case. The court found that the prevention of prostitution, a 'criminal activity', was a 'legitimate reason' to refuse entry to the women. In a nonsensical judgment the court said that the women had been refused entry not on the grounds of their appearance but on the suspicion of criminal activity.

Some of the women pursued an appeal and the decision of the Appeal Court was released a few weeks ago. Sadly, the Appeal Court upheld the decision of the lower court finding again that no discrimination had taken place. The Appeal Court agreed with the lower court that the prevention of prostitution was a 'legitimate reason' for the actions taken by the pub in refusing entry to Asian-looking women.

Wendy Lyon, blogging at Feminist Ire , analyses the decision:

First, of course, there's the blatantly racist nature of the policy, now formally endorsed and legitimated by a Swedish judiciary which sees nothing wrong with singling out women of colour for whore stigma. The second thing is that this decision exposes the lie that the Swedish law is not about targeting sex workers. Of course it is. They may not be targeted for prosecution, but the Swedish authorities are more than happy to go after them with any other means at their disposal.

This decision from the Swedish courts is highly disturbing. Not only does it condone the racial profiling of women of colour but it also gives services in Sweden the green light to discriminate against sex workers. While the women in this case were not sex workers the courts have stated that preventing prostitution is a 'legitimate reason' for permitting discrimination that would ordinarily be unlawful. That means that any discrimination against people who do actually sell sex can be justified on the same grounds and discrimination against sex workers will go unpunished. This confirms what we already know -- that the Swedish approach to sex work hurts most those it is supposedly designed to protect.

A Belgian court has ordered a brothel owner to change the name of his DSK sex club, which shares its initials with those of fallen one-time French presidential contender Dominique Strauss Kahn. He objected to the name in a lawsuit.

Owner Dominique Alderweireld or Dodo la Saumure , is linked to sex parties attended by Strauss-Kahn and dubbed his latest brothel DSKlub, in an admitted reference to the scandal-hit politician.

The court decided in favour of Strauss-Kahn who is well known by his initials DSK in France and neighbouring French-speaking countries such as Belgium and Switzerland. Strauss-Kahn's lawyers said they sued Alderweireld for deliberately choosing a name that reproduces his (Strauss-Kahn's) initials which identify him to all.

Alderweireld chose the acronym for the new brothel Dodo Sex Klub which opened this year in the town of Blaton, near the French border in Belgium where prostitution and brothel ownership are legal.