An article by Bambang Muryanto and Yemris Fointuna in The Jakarta Post describes a demonstration in Yogyakarta which aimed to improve the government response to HIV and reject the closing of the red light district and the use of bylaws to discriminate against sex workers.
“The government must be more serious in familiarizing and providing education on HIV/AIDS to migrant workers,” executive director of the Institute for Migrant Workers (IWORK), Y. Budi Wibawa told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the meeting.
Quoting data from the Care for Migrant Workers Association, Wibawa said that last year 50 migrant workers working in Malaysia were infected by the deadly disease. This year, 12 were infected.
The St James Infirmary (SJI) in San Francisco is running a poster campaign with the tag line of Someone you know is a sex worker. The campaign is their first major media campaign featuring local sex workers to raise public awareness about sex workers rights. The campaign is based on a number of photographs of sex workers with different slogans.
An article in the Taipei Times by Loa Lok-sin explains how The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) have been demonstrating against the criminalization of the sex industry in Taiwan.
The Global Commission on HIV and the Law held a High Income Countries Dialogue in Oakland California on September 16th & 17th. Over 50 representatives from civil society from high income countries came to discuss the intersections of HIV and the law and it’s impact in their countries. Sex worker rights advocates from 10 countries drafted a 10 point Declaration.
The second edition of the pioneering London Sex Worker Open University will happen at The Arcola Theatre (24 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL) in East London 12-16 October, bringing together sex workers and allies from around the world to learn new skills, socialise and empower themselves, whilst exploring the diversity and contradictions of the sex industry.
Rose Alliance spokesperson, Pye Jakobsen, is quoted in an article on http://www.yle.fi. The story covers discussions from a meeting of sex worker rights activists who were concerned about the use of laws that criminalise sex workers, the impact of these laws on the way that society views sex work and sex workers and the regional implications of law reform. “In my opinion other Nordic countries should give up the stupid belief that we in Sweden have all the answers, because we don’t,” declared Jakobsen.
South Korean sex workers demonstrated to call for the abolition of laws that toughened the punishment for prostitution. About 1,600 people took to the streets last week and chanted slogans calling for the laws to be scrapped at a rally in Seoul. Earlier this year, police launched intensified crackdowns on several brothels in Seoul and other cities, sparking protests.
Photos from the ICAAP demonstrations show courageous Laxmi Narayan Tripathi and others attempting to stop a police car taking away a lawyer who had been arrested.
Behind the Mask Correspondent Melissa Wainaina spoke to Kenyan male sex worker John Mathenge about his work raising awareness amongst fellow sex workers and those living positively with HIV or Aids.
Taking the example of Korean sex workers, community protesters got up on stage today in the plenary with facemasks symbolising the silencing of the voices of the communities, and read a list of demands to the organisers and UNAIDS.
We are appalled at the failure of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific, the Local Organising Committee and the UN in predicting, preventing and effectively intervening in the violence that took place on the 27th of August 2011.
Busan – South Korea - Press Statement – Saturday 27th August 2011- For immediate release
Police beat and arrested South Korean activists, among them people living with HIV/AIDS, during a PEACEFUL march at the ICAAP in Busan. The march was organised to protest against Free Trade agreements being negotiated across the Asia Pacific region. International and Korean activists were jointly marching through the Conference Convention Center.
Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology at George Washington University, writes an insightful article in 'The Huffington Post' exposing some of the enduring myths about human trafficking and the dangers of conflating sex trafficking with sex work itself. Read the whole article here.
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee is a collective of 65000 female, male and transgender sex workers in West Bengal, India. Their most recent Bulletin provides an update on The Supreme Court’s new panel to rehabilitate sex workers; their work with Nachnis, traditional dancers, to help them to fight for their rights and recognition and; an event they held for the members of the national under 13s football team which was attended by the Minister of State for Sports, Government of West Bengal, Mr Madan Mitra.
This video is part of a project of APNSW teaching sex workers to make their own advocacy videos and to document their work. This film is from TOP (Targeted Outreach Project) in Yangon. The TOP Program is a national, community run HIV Program for Female, Male and TG sex workers and MSM in Myanmar/Burma. They have set up 18 centres nationally and 95% of the staff come from the community.
The commercial sex workers (CSWs) of Sangli celebrated Raksha Bandhan on Saturday by tying rakhis to local police officers and social workers.
This was the first time that CSWs in Sangli had an occasion to celebrate the festival. Local NGO Veshya Mahila AIDS Nirmulan Sanstha had organised the event at the red light area in Premnagar near Swarup theatre in Sangli.
With news articles on International Sex Worker Rights Day and the appointment of Kyomya Macklean as the new ASWA Regional Coordinator this e-newsletter is a must read.
The Regional Dialogue for sub-Saharan Africa, part of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, was held at the beginning of August in Pretoria, South Africa.
After another recent case where an HIV positive female sex worker was jailed for propagating sexually transmissible infections, local groups that work with sex workers speak out about the possible impact on HIV infections and how the discriminatory nature of the law violates the human rights of sex workers.
You can read the whole article published in the ‘Global Times’ here.
Stepping Stone, a sex-workers advocacy group in Nova Scotia, has released a series of ads that remind people that sex workers are also someone's mother, daughter or friend.
The ads feature messages such as "I'm proud of my tramp raising two kids on her own" and "I'm glad my prostitute made me finish school."
