LADIES OF PLEASURE OR SEX SLAVES?

Dutch prostitution policy is meant to free female sex workers from parasitic pimps and turn them into empowered self-employed entrepreneurs. But the authorities are now asking their clients for help to tackle the problem of women being trafficked for sex.

The Netherlands is known internationally for certain clichés: red wheels of Edam cheese, clogs, dikes, joints and prostitutes. Everyone knows about how the Dutch decriminalised prostitution and thinks it is normal for scantily clad women of all ages to flaunt themselves in windows just meters from the Damrak, the city's main thorough fair. While the authorities in other countries spend a lot of time and resources rounding up and prosecuting women sex workers, the Netherlands tolerates and taxes them.

Prostitutes must be at least 18 and their clients must be at least 16. The women who sell their bodies in brothels or the 12 red light districts with windows in the Netherlands are assumed to be self-employed. The windows, with a red light hanging above, are rented out by companies to the women for eight-hour shifts for some EUR 60 to 150. The prostitutes work when they want and decide what services to offer and how much to charge.

The argument underpinning the policy is that allowing sex workers to operate openly will free them from the middle men, the pimps. The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes. There are indications, however, that not everyone working in the industry is doing so willingly. A report by the national detective service in 2002 suggested a quarter of the prostitutes in the Netherlands were the victims of human trafficking. The expansion of the European Union, it said, had led to a flood of women from the east. Trafficking gangs confiscate their passports and put them to work as prostitutes.

The police conducted 42 successful investigations into human trafficking in 2003, down in the 55 cases the year before. A provisional estimate for 2004 showed an increase once more. The most common nationalities among the 148 people arrested for human smuggling in 2003 were Dutch, Romanian and Bulgarian. But the percentage for different nationalities fluctuates widely every year. Twenty-two of the detainees in 2003 were owners of sex businesses.

The crime prevention agency The M Foundation launched a campaign with the police in January 2006 to encourage members of the public to report instances of human trafficking. The focus of the campaign is the exploitation of trafficked women in the sex industry. The police are circulating posters and stickers to alert the public and to get people to report instances of forced prostitution. The signs a woman is being forced to sell her body, the police say, include little responsiveness to the client, bruising and fearfulness. more features

February 14, 2006