Forget the propaganda and hear the evidence on rape, trafficking and prostitution

The day before the final debate on the prostitution clauses in the PCB, please join us in a discussion of the evidence. Whatever your views on the sex industry, women's safety must be the priority. Trafficking cannot be stopped by driving prostitution further underground.

Dr Nick Mai - Author of 'Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry', the latest research on trafficking and prostitution, Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET), London Metropolitan University.

Royal College of Nursing - Why 93% of its nurses voted to decriminalise prostitution.

Women Against Rape - Will the PCB make women safer? Is there a distinction between rape/trafficking and prostitution?

English Collective of Prostitutes - the US criminalises both clients and sex workers while New Zealand has decriminalised prostitution. Which is safer?

Others contributing: lawyers, people from the church, anti-poverty campaigners, drug reformers . . .

Comments

Submitted by susan davis on November 4, 2009 - 1:00pm.

SEX WORKERS NEED SAFETY AND RIGHTS, NOT CRIMINALISATION

Demonstration Against the Policing and Crime Bill

12-2pm, Tuesday 3 November, Parliament Square

Bring placards and red umbrella's and join the demonstration to demand:

- an end to the criminalisation of sex work

- safety and other rights for all workers in the sex industry, including the right to unionise

- the right to stay and not be deported

- the right not to have a criminal record so we can apply for other jobs

- decent wages and benefits for all so that we can refuse violence and exploitation in any industry

If passed the Policing and Crime Bill will push prostitution further underground and sex workers into more danger. It would increase arrests against street workers, introduce compulsory 'rehabilitation' under threat of imprisonment, close premises where sex workers work together in relative safety, boost police powers to seize worker's hard won earnings, and reduce rape against prostitute women to a lesser offence while criminalising clients who may not be guilty.

The government justifies their latest clamp down with claims that prostitution is rape and that most sex workers have been trafficked. Instead of enabling victims of violence to come forward, they victimise and criminalise women working in the sex industry. Most violent men, including bosses who profit from exploiting 'illegal' workers in the agricultural, domestic and sex industry, will continue to get away with it, while sex workers working together, especially migrant women, will be raided, imprisoned and deported.

At the same time the Welfare Reform Bill proposes to abolish Income Support and drive all claimants into work or to 'work for their benefits' i.e. £1.60 an hour. Many are already being asked to scab on postal workers by applying for their jobs. Those who won't or can't manage on slave wages and decide to work in the sex industry risk being criminalised and consequently denied entry into other work in the future.

We are mothers and grandmothers supporting loved ones, young people keeping a roof over our heads and getting some independence, migrants sending money home, asylum seekers made destitute by immigration laws that deny us both support and the right to work, students paying for our education, women or men who can't get jobs in the recession or want a better standard of living.

Like any other workers, some of us like our jobs, many don't. But we all know the difference between forced and consenting sex, whether in a relationship, casual or paid for. Most people support the decriminalisation of prostitution so women can work more safely. But, as with privatisation and everything else, the government ignores the workers and the public; they only listen to the 'experts' they fund to sing to their tune.

Whatever our situation we need rights & safety, not criminalisation.

Catch rapists and exploiters, not clients.

Organised by:

English Collective of Prostitutes, ecp@allwomencount.net, 020 7482 2496, Cari Mitchell: 07811 964 171, www.prostitutescollective.net [3]; International Union of Sex Workers, www.iusw.org [4], 0795 802 0432; x:talk project: xtalk.classes@googlemail.com [5], Ava Caradonna: 0791 470 3372 www.xtalkproject.net [6].

Submitted by susan davis on November 4, 2009 - 1:55pm.

so , does anyone care to discuss canada's deportation of the so called victims of trafficking? what are peoples plans for protecting these vulnerable people?

we have laid our plans out pretty clearly, what would abolitionists do to protect trafficked people? anything? ......any palns or comments at all.....?

Submitted by Fidel on November 4, 2009 - 7:06pm.

I don't know to what extent Kosovo is involved in human trafficking, but Kosovo was recognized as a new breakaway state by Canada and the US. Canada's former military Major General Lewis Mackenzie says that Hashim Thaci is a war criminal and now heads up the narco administration in Kosovo. I think the Albanian mafia are receiving drugs exorted from Afghanistan by the US, British, and probably even Canadian militaries. Russian mobsters consider Albanian mafia to be even more ruthless than themselves. In any event, the Kosovar-Albanian mafia have been implicated in human trafficking among other crimes. I think human trafficking and other criminal activities are recognized by western governments(off the books of course) as legitimate areas of business conducted by their friends around the world.

Foreign workers lured with lies 2008

Quote:

"Quite frankly, we are exploiting their vulnerability and taking advantage of their precarious position." The problems can start in a victim's home country, where employment agencies have been known to charge anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000 to process Canadian job applications, says Anette Sikka, who spent several years trying to combat human trafficking in Kosovo before returning to Canada where she is researching human trafficking at the University of Ottawa.

In some cases, agencies are charging workers for skills and language training in their home country and then charging a "settlement" fee upon arrival in Canada -- calling it such gets them around provincial provisions that make it illegal to charge for finding employment, Sikka says.

DEBT TO PAY

Like many trafficking victims who are smuggled into this country, these victims are, too, told they have a debt to pay off. We found you a job, now you owe us some money.

And there is nobody telling them otherwise.

"There's nobody to check up on them," Sikka says. . . By the time they figure out they are working illegally, experts say, these workers may be hesitant to speak out about an exploitive situation for fear of deportation.

Submitted by susan davis on November 4, 2009 - 7:38pm.

it's the same situation in canada. it happened to construction workers i know who were forced to pay $15,000.00 to the company "lawyer".

same appliies to migrant sex workers in vancouver. they were unwilling to report violence against them and a series of targeted robbies ensued. 3 cowards went in and terrorized workers and other staff stealing everything and assaulting the workers. finally in yaletown a security guy was killed, stabbed to death defending the lives of the 2 women working there. not exactly the pimp others lke to describe.one of the 3 men was caught however and the robberies seem to have stopped from what these workers tell us.

also, after melissa farley's dramatic visit to the vancouver police board, demanding action be taken to protect trafficking victims, a series of raids followed. the did not find one trafficking victim but many workers were deported for working in canada illegally.

one of the many harms associated with inflated fears about human trafficking. workers being driven under ground.