News Archive: September 2012

Reports from Kenya are emerging of police blocking and barricading sex workers who were demonstrating today against the recent murders of colleagues and attending the burial of one sex worker.

The protesters had been granted a permit by the police to have a procession in the town of Thika today, and were then planning to continue to the funeral of their colleague.  The police however barricaded more than 300 sex workers at the mortuary.  John Mathenge said the police, some brandishing guns, had threatened demonstrators with tear gas. 

KEWSA, who organised the demonstration in Thika, later addressed the media and demanded police action to investigate the murders.  You can see the ASWA & KESWA press statement on the murders here.

Read more about today's demonstration in Identity Kenya.

Georgina Perry, service manager at Open Doors, a sex worker outreach service in East London has written an extensive article reproduced on The Trafficking Research Project's blog outlining her experience of the Olympics. 

Georgina writes powerfully about the damage done by the draconian anti-trafficking measures taken by the authorities, how this led to mass raids, the closure of many brothels and the destruction of relationships between services and sex workers which took years to build up. 

In summarising Georgina says:

'I’d say that we are currently picking up the pieces, and that it is going to take us a long time to restore sex worker faith in institutional support. Where once the relationship between sex worker services and clients was good, it is now broken. We are now viewed with suspicion as ‘do-gooders or enforcers’. Where once sex workers may have felt it possible to report crimes against them to the police, there is now a dangerous and distrustful environment in London with crimes going unreported for fear of unwanted repercussions.'

'The brothel closures that were deemed so important to the success of anti-trafficking measures in London have little impact when most women trafficked for sexual exploitation are sold through closed community networks and never end up in the brothels where the majority of sex work is conducted. This information is readily available, and has been for some years, and yet, like all evidence surrounding this episode, was resolutely ignored because it did not fit the inherent anti-prostitution agenda.'

Read Georgina's full article here.