Handcuffed, shoeless and tied to a rope, these girls are being led through the streets of China as part of a police crackdown against prostitution.

But the images of the girls being frogmarched down the Guangzhou road - with their shoes removed to stop them running away - have shocked many in China.

An outraged Chinese woman named Wan Yu took the images on her mobile phone and posted on the web.

A police spokesman defended the broad daylight action saying that the public humiliation of the women and their customers would have been a further deterrent to other people considering getting involved in prostitution.

Update: Police Slavers Banned from Displaying their Wares

29th July 2010. Based on article from shanghaiist.com

It's taken a while, considering public opinion had already turned against the practice years ago, but the Ministry of Public Security has finally issued an edict saying that police around the country are no longer allowed to publicly shame prostitutes and johns as a method of stopping the acts from happening.

According to a circular issued by the Ministry of Public Security, provincial security departments must absolutely not conduct activities such as prostitute parades, or anything else that would undermine human dignity, while cracking down on prostitution in their respective cities.

Guangdong police in Dongguan came under fire after they released pictures of prostitutes they caught handcuffed and barefoot, led through the streets on a rope. Dongguan police backpedaled quickly, arguing that they hadn't meant to publicly shame anyone, and this was just standard protocol that happened to be photographed and that the media put up.

Adult fun for all ages

The Thai sex trade is driven by overweight, unattractive, middle-aged divorcees, right?

Wrong. A Fabulous investigation reveals it's now 20-something Brits paying for sex.

Nick and Gary are on a boys-only holiday with a difference. Their girlfriends think they're on a golfing trip, when in fact they have come to Thailand solely to have sex with prostitutes.

The young men, both 21 and chefs, are in the beach resort of Pattaya for the first time on a two-week break. Good-looking, with decent jobs and gorgeous girlfriends at home, they are not the sort of guys you expect to see paying for sex on the seedy streets of Thailand. But in the 24 hours since they landed, they've already handed over cash to two prostitutes.

Unashamedly, they compare it to trying to secure a one-night stand. While they might buy girls drinks all night only to get blown out in Tenerife, here they know if they fork out money, they're guaranteed sex at the end of the night.

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Three months into a crackdown against prostitution and gambling, a senior officer says police have a clear idea of how the businesses are carried out in Beijing - and a firm resolve to stamp them out.

Qian Jin, vice-head of the Security Corps within the city's Public Security Bureau, told METRO that the operation that started April 14 has involved 9,000 police officers. Qian said 100 officers hit the streets each night along with 30 plain-clothes colleagues. They have hassled 2,000 KTV (karaoke) clubs and bath houses in the city looking for people enjoying themselves.

Qian said: We are determined to put an end to the following five illegal activities in the entertainment places. I am referring to organizing, housing and offering prostitution; staging obscene shows; setting up casinos; operating irregularly; and managing a business without qualified documents, such as the permits from the environmental and cultural departments.

Qian said the police raids on KTVs have found that many are operated irregularly, incorporating such things as security doors and alarm systems to make people aware of raids who are deeper inside the building. Some, he said, have closed for redecoration during the crackdown but have continued to provide sex services for their members.

He said police have also uncovered other deficiencies in the businesses such as broken equipment, poor security practices, a lack of required video surveillance technology, loose management practices and even illegally stored knives and rubber staffs kept as weapons.

He continued that police will step up the crackdown by continuing to target KTVs and bath houses, this time concentrating on checking employee authorization cards (IC cards) and ensuring workers do not have criminal records connected to prostitution, gambling or drug addiction: The IC card is a magnetic card carrying their real names that can show if they have a criminal record, especially for pornography. If so, according to Chinese law, they are prohibited from engaging in the entertainment industry. They are required to swipe their cards when they go to work each day, so we can get a timely grasp of their tracks.

Qian said entertainment places must also employ qualified security guards from formal security companies who have received state training.

Also, entertainment venues are required by law to have a fully functioning CCTV system capable of storing a clear image for 30 days. They are, however, not allowed to set up cameras near the entrance and exit to watch out for the police, he said.

Businesses that fail to meet these obligations can be fined and have their business licenses suspended for up to six months. And enterprises that have their licenses pulled twice in the space of two years and those that have them pulled three times in total will have their licenses revoked, he said.

Police plan to carry out a one-month clean-up of city bars. Since the crackdown and the tighter regulation of the city's KTV clubs and bath houses, prostitutes have begun to flow to the bars and have continued to engage in prostitution, Qian said.

The Spanish government has put itself on collision course with the national press with the announcement that it wants to ban adverts offering sexual services from their classified sections.

The adverts, which fill at least a page in most of Spain's dailies, are worth €40m (£34m) a year to the newspaper industry.

President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made the announcement during this week's state of the nation speech, claiming it was part of a strategy to fight the people trafficking and sexual exploitation: As long as these advertisements exist, they contribute to the idea of this activity as normal.

If the ads are banned, newspapers will want to be compensated and, worryingly for Zapatero, El País, a staunch supporter of his socialist party, is the paper that earns the most from this form of advertising. With its left-liberal sensibilities and readership profile, El País is the Spanish paper that most resembles the Guardian, and yet it earns €5m a year from advertising prostitution.

Yolanda Besteiro of the 'Progressive' Women's Federation was scathing about what she regards as the newspaper's hypocrisy: No media outlet can proclaim itself a defender of human rights when it publishes this kind of advertising, which makes them directly complicit in this type of slavery.

The most openly religious daily, ABC, also runs the ads. El Publíco is the only national that does not run them as a matter of policy. Spain is the only European country where the quality press carries adverts for sex. Prostitution is big business in Spain, worth an estimated €18bn a year.

One small section of a crowd of 40,000

People working in South Africa's sex industry expected an influx of customers during the World Cup but instead, tourists have been flocking to the country's museums.

The World Cup has been devastating, the owner of a Johannesburg escort company told CNN. We thought it was going to be a cash cow but it's chased a lot of business away. It's been the worst month in my company's history.

The escort service's madam also added that she can't wait for the fans to leave. No one is interested in sex at the moment. I think we've had three customers who travelled here for the World Cup which has seen my group's business drop by 80%. I enjoyed watching the games, but I can't wait for everyone to just go home now.

Zobwa, a prostitute and chairperson of a group that represents 70 prostitutes in Johannesburg told CNN, People went to the bars and stadiums to watch the games and afterwards they went home. They didn't bother themselves with coming to us.

Back in March, South African officials expected 40,000 prostitutes would be flooding into the country but Zobwa said she has left the city because the money just isn't there.

On the other end, museums and art galleries have been booming with international visitors. The Apartheid Museum received three times the number of expected patrons while the Johannesburg Art Gallery has seen an extra thousand people.

A moral panic around childhood sexualisation and the dangers of the internet is closing down important channels of debate and making the internet a more dangerous place for adults and young people alike.

That was the consensus view taken by Onscenity, an international network launched this week, which draws together experts to respond to the new visibility or onscenity of sex in commerce, culture and everyday life.

David Buckingham, Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, London University, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, complained about the current media panic over the sexualisation of childhood. While some issues went away with the last government, David Cameron also appears to believe this is a problem.

The real problem, though, is that no one knows what sexualisation is: it is a convenient label used to position the child as always the victim, and then to pile every problem imaginable on top, including paedophilia, body image, sex trafficking and self-esteem. Once that particular juggernaut gets rolling, it is almost impossible to have a sensible debate about what's really going on.

Too many so-called experts – most famously, Dr Linda Papadopoulos - were speaking well outside their field of expertise. Eating disorders get ascribed to sexualisation, despite the fact that most dietary experts would question that conclusion. Worse is the way in which this debate is almost always framed in moralising terms, and a key question must be what political motive lies behind such framing.

Equally of concern was the way in which healthy sexuality is so often equated to non-commercial – as though sex alone can be an activity free from all commercial influence.

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