Over a year ago, most Kenyans were taken aback when there came a report that
prostitution would be legalized in Kenya. There was a huge outcry, saying that
it would greatly contribute to the moral decadence of society and that our
girls would be given a bad example and would no longer have the morale to
attend school. However, there were a few of those who felt that
prostitution was going on albeit illegally in Kenya, and it indeed had a huge
patronage whom included the cream of society; lawyers, politicians, ministers
and so forth. With that in mind reasons were pushed forward why it should
be legalized, even going so far as to quote the Netherlands as a country which
has controlled prostitution and has had a measure of “success.” Obviously,
outsiders have little knowledge about how the country, most especially the City
of Amsterdam is grappling with the issue having been a decade since it was legalized.
Prostitution
may be touted as the world's oldest profession, yet in many nations it is
shunned. In Holland, it is a different matter; prostitution is considered
liberal here having been legalized in the year 2000. With every pursuit of
freedom and liberalism however; come bondage, crime and the issue of human
trafficking. Prostitution is two-faced in Amsterdam; on the one hand the
prostitutes of the Red-Light District, the ones licensed to do what they do,
the ones so visible as they stand under red neon lights, in skimpy lingerie
behind windows like live mannequins on display. On the other hand you have
invisible undocumented women, young Africans trafficked into the Netherlands
and tucked away in rooms and houses in the Bijlmer, South East of Amsterdam;
women for whom prostitution has become a way of life. Jaap van der Wijk
has lived and worked in the Red Light District for many years. In his
experience as a probation officer with the Ministry of Justice, he blogs that,
“It is safe to say that most of these women became prostitutes because they
needed the money, either to survive or to maintain or pursue a certain
lifestyle.” He continues to say that, “Most prostitutes came from broken homes
with a poor social background, and most of them grew up in
institutional/correctional facilities.” But he admits that “Not every
prostitute I know spent her childhood in an institution, but I have never met a
prostitute who had a happy childhood, and if they spent their childhood with
their parents, it was either too many rules or a complete lack of rules that
made them feel unloved.” He adds that, “At least 30% of the prostitutes I
talked with, were sexually abused in their childhood, usually by a relative, or
men they thought they could trust, like a neighbor, or a friend of the family.”
Nonetheless, this may not necessarily be the profile that fits all the
prostitutes found in the Red-Light District or Amsterdam in general. For the
most part, their stories are about seeking greener pastures, being trafficked and
finding themselves sold into sex slavery.
Beulah
(not her real name) from Ghana was once happily married, she looked healthier
unlike her present gaunt state, I observe as she passes over some pictures of
herself in her younger days. Her fiance brought her to Holland, married her and
ensured she had a resident permit. A few years into their marriage, her husband
became her pimp and begun making arrangements for her to go to the streets
every night. “He used me”, she laments, “We made roughly 1000 Euros a month,
but he kept all the money.” When she was arrested and put behind bars, her
husband became busy in a new relationship. She was released after ten months
and to her astonishment; her husband had vanished with their child. She was due
to get her Dutch passport in a few months; but because her husband who was her
sponsor had left the country, her permission to stay was invalid and she became
illegal. She felt the only way she could live on was to do prostitution. “I
like fine clothes and fine living, and I get too tired to do house-cleaning,”
she states in reference to the other alternative there is for undocumented
women. She has been careless many times, she confesses. “I’ve had 16
abortions,” she says, shrugging off the memory. There are other issues, today
she is HIV+ and an alcoholic.
Aurelia
(not her real name) is from Sierra Leone. She remembers good times and the
large family she left behind. “My dad was polygamous and had three wives,” she
says. “We siblings never coped with our step-brothers and sisters”, she adds,
“But when dad passed away, we all became friends to date.” Her huge family is
scattered all over Holland and in other parts of Europe. Her big sister paid a
lot of money for a smuggler to bring her to the Netherlands so that she could
earn money by going out with men. Aurelia never had plans to do so, and decided
to part ways with her sister on arrival in the Netherlands. She recounts
terrible memories of the civil war in Sierra Leone, “The soldiers would rip
open the bellies of pregnant women and pull the fetuses out,” “they would ask
people whether they wanted a long sleeve or short sleeve,” in reference to the
severing of limbs either at the elbows or at the wrist. She recalls the
forcible circumcision as a child and despite revealing all to the immigration
department, her application for asylum was rejected. Out on the streets, alone
and estranged from her sister; the harsh reality set in and paradoxically, she
chose sex with men just to survive.
Strolling
in the Red-Light District, I am aware of a sense of security. Security guards
act as a buffer to the sex industry here, and the prostitutes are protected by
the police. It is not difficult to bump into policemen who patrol the area in
pairs every few hours and on a daily basis. The safety however, seems like a
mirage; for in the undercurrents, criminal activity and human trafficking is very
present. Amsterdam Councilor Karina Schaapman Content, herself a former
prostitute is quoted by Radio Netherlands as saying, “There are people who are
really proud of the Red Light district as a tourist attraction. It’s supposed
to be such a wonderful, cheery place that shows just what a free city we are.
But I think it’s a cesspit. There’s a lot of serious criminality. There is a
lot of exploitation of women and a lot of social distress. That’s nothing to be
proud of.” A former trafficking victim from the Czech Republic (name withheld)
testifies that, “These people put me in the window and told me what I had to
say, how much money I have to ask, how much money I have to pay every
day. If I don’t do it they will just kill me or my daughter. I
wouldn’t talk to anybody about the situation and these people tell me that they
were watching me every day. And it’s true because I was working in a
window upstairs and downstairs are walking men every day and every night so he
(pimp) could tell how many men go upstairs so I can’t get some money for me,
ever. He knows everything and I was working like this for almost a
year. The clients.. men..police, lawyers..everything and you don’t get
help from these people. You don’t have to tell these people because they
know and some of these people have been in touch with my boss, my pimp…”
The
legalization of prostitution has had a counter effect, as officials at
Amsterdam’s City Council now discover. The ten-year period since prostitution
was legalized, has concurrently been the period that the European Union (EU)
enlargement has taken place. As a consequence there has been free movement
across borders, and the high unemployment figures in Eastern Europe means that
many women looking for greener pastures fall into the hands of
traffickers. In countries such as Moldova, Hungary or even Russia; job
advertisements for dancers and waitresses turn out to be traffickers
manipulating them into prostitution. When these women cross over, they
find themselves sold into sex slavery to pimps or lover boys who enslave and
house them, forcing them to pay “debts” by working overtime as
prostitutes. It would take singular bravado for a young woman to break
out and begin to tell their story.
The
1012 project, launched by the Amsterdam municipal council about four
years ago and named after the red light district’s postcode, has been shutting
down brothels and other businesses conducive to crimes while bringing in
fashion designers, fancy restaurants and art shops. Lodewijk Asscher, deputy
mayor of Amsterdam is determined to further advance the on-going renovation
project aimed at discouraging crimes and upgrading tourism in the city’s
well-known red light district. More than 120 brothels have been closed so
far, midway towards the city council’s goal of reducing its’ number by 40
percent. For sex workers who want to quit, the city council also has a
special program with an annual budget of 500,000 euros to help them start a new
life, but it is proving to be a difficult task as most sex workers working in
the district come from outside the Netherlands and often travel across
Europe. Toos Hemskerk from Not For Sale, Amsterdam feels that
investing in business in Eastern Europe is the key to creating new
futures. She shares why, “Here any woman from Romania and Bulgaria can
work as a self-employed prostitute, but due to visa restrictions, cannot work
in other industries. Their options are limited. Stay in prostitution , or
go home and face unemployment. The creation of new jobs will give hope to those
who otherwise feel hopeless.” According to the city council, the 1012
project will last for 10 or 15 years. New laws on prostitution were passed last
summer, under which the minimum eligible age for prostitution was raised from
18 to 21.
In
a rare interview, Metje Blaak, herself a former prostitute and heading the
information centre, The Red Thread bemoans the lot of prostitution in
these current times; she complains that there are indeed big problems with the
government. “There are too many rules, I feel that there is coming a time when
it will be illegal to solicit a prostitute, we are heading in that direction,”
she says when I ask her about the challenges with the Amsterdam City Council.
“Legislation was a great idea for the girls, they are free to work, but there
are challenges with the rules, there are too many rules; rules about
registration, about taxes. There is a lot of regulation and the girls are going
out of business.” While The Red Thread is very prominent in Amsterdam’s
Red Light District; acting as an information center with a mission that
includes “empowering sex workers by helping them to inform, identify,
investigate, advise and connect,” you have organizations at the opposite end of
the spectrum that acts as enabling mechanisms for those who want to escape the
clutches of prostitution. Organizations like The Scarlet Cord, Not
for Sale and CoMensha work closely with prostitutes revealing human
trafficking cases and enabling the women flee from that lifestyle, in essence
giving them other options; room to recover and rehabilitate to normalcy.
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