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Staying calm about trafficking and the Olympics: reasonable testimony in a London council meeting

12 June 2011 in trafficking by laura agustin | No comments | print print

Waltham Forest Town Hall

On 27 April 2011 I appeared as an expert witness to discuss sex trafficking in relation to the London Olympics of 2012. Five London boroughs are considered to be ‘hosts’ of the Olympics, meaning that actual events and buildings are located within their boundaries. This meeting took place in the council chamber of Waltham Forest town hall.,the grandness of which took me by surprise.

Others invited to testify at the meeting included the head of SCD9, the London Metropolitan Police’s year-old anti-trafficking unit. Despite being described by his colleague as the gold standard for understanding of human trafficking, Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin made errors of fact when talking about Germany and Holland and did not refer to the previous palpable failures of the national anti-trafficking unit in Sheffield (lots of money spent, few people arrested or saved, disbanded as ineffective). He also did not acknowledge that different British police authorities have published contradictory figures to describe arrests and rescues. This seemed to be a whitewashing of history through omission and a refusal to acknowledge any lessons learned even from not long past. Martin also did not mention recent raids on sex work venues in East London reported in the Observer, and he responded to my question about them by saying that SCD9, his unit, were not the ones to carry them out. Hm. Anyway the raids were reported as a typical anti-trafficking tactic – that is, a police move to repress a dangerous activity just in case something scary might possibly be on the cards.

Everyone present, including the Poppy Project, agreed that panics about sex trafficking and big sporting events have not occurred anywhere. No one attempted to scare the council about an impending avalanche of either trafficked victims or rapacious border-crossing sex workers. That seems like a small advance, although of course it may not last. I was happy to advise the council that there is no necessity for them to start up any pricey anti-trafficking campaign or raids on sex venues. Take it easy, was my message. And don’t stigmatise foreigners who are selling sex and don’t reproduce negative ethnic stereotypes (I was made uncomfortable by the way people referred to ‘eastern European women’ as the latest victims).

Charlotte Cooper and two other new friends living in East London accompanied me to the meeting; Charlotte wrote an account of it called Fat, Sex Work, Rescue Industries, and she took a photo of the imposing council chamber: I am over at the far right with Georgina Perry from the Open Doors sexual health project.

I enjoyed participating in this meeting for one important reason: the people listening really wanted to hear from the witnesses. They were interested and receptive, and, in my case, amazed to hear what I had to say. Afterwards several councillors came and said to me, We never hear this kind of information, I had no idea, Where do we find out more? and so on. In fact, even ordinary well-educated people never get to hear about undocumented migration, smuggling and pragmatic migrant sex work, because there is what amounts to an embargo on this information in the mainstream media. The BBC invited me to Luxor because that was called a debate, and as I had to explain to UN no-goodwill ambassador Sorvino, debate in the British tradition signifies dissent and difference of opinion. And while a lot of television and radio shows do some form of debating, many topics are taboo. Ludicrously, a Guardian editor once justified hiding my article The Shadowy World of Sex Across Borders by claiming ‘Our readers are not interested in trafficking.’ Oh, please. [Note: Fifteen minutes after the article appeared on the Guardian website it was removed and tucked out of sight, so that no one saw it and few commented. If this is not a form of censorship I don't know what is.]

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

 

 

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London Olympics and the spectre of trafficking: police already repressing sex work

21 April 2011 in trafficking by laura agustin | 3 comments | print print

A lot of people never wanted the Olympics to come to London and are unhappy about what all the ‘development’ means in easterm areas of the city – thus the negative graffiti on a countdown meter in the photo. The boroughs most directly affected by the games know by now that there is no need to panic about 40 000 prostitutes or victims of trafficking descending: there have been too many debunkings, on this website and numerous others. People do wonder if they ought to be Doing Something though. One of these boroughs, Waltham Forest, has invited me as an expert witness to a community meeting to be held next week, on the 27th – perhaps I will see some readers there?

A report called The 2012 Games and human trafficking: Identifying possible risks and relevant good practice from other cities came out not long ago, and seems to say that everything is possible but nothing is actually known about trafficking to events like the Olympics. Just to be on the safe side, though, a special unit of the police have begun raiding flats in the Olympics’s boroughs.

London 2012 Olympics: Crackdown on brothels ‘puts sex workers at risk’

Jamie Doward, 10 April 2011, The Observer

Scotland Yard has been accused of endangering sex workers after it emerged that officers were targeting brothels in London’s Olympic boroughs as part of a coordinated clean-up operation ahead of the 2012 games. The Yard’s human exploitation and organised crime command (SCD9) was launched in April last year, bringing together expertise in the fields of clubs and vice, human trafficking and immigration crime. The command incorporates a team dedicated to tackling vice-related crime in the five Olympic host boroughs: Waltham Forest, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Greenwich.

Figures recently released to parliament by the Home Office show SCD9 carried out 80 brothel raids between January to August 2010 in the five boroughs. There were a further 20 raids in Westminster and 13 in Camden – the two boroughs expected to play host to the majority of tourists who come to the capital for the games. In contrast, in the remaining 25 London boroughs, there were just 29 raids over the same period.

Similar vice crackdowns have taken place in other countries hosting major sporting events. The London initiative comes amid disputed claims that increased numbers of sex workers will try to work in the capital during the Olympics. But the probation union, Napo, claimed the crackdown would have unintended consequences. “Attempts to remove sex workers from the Olympic boroughs will be only a partial success,” said Harry Fletcher, Napo’s assistant general secretary. “The strategy will drive the trade underground and prohibition merely distorts the laws of supply and demand. As a consequence, the trade will be more dangerous for women. Policy initiatives should address real problems, such as housing, health and safety, and not be based on flawed ideology which distorts the market and endangers the women.” Figures from the Open Door agency, a health clinic based in East London, appear to partially confirm Napo’s claim. The agency reported that there has already been a significant displacement of sex workers throughout Newham, with a decline of 25% in referrals to health clinics since the previous year. Napo said it appeared the women had not stopped working, but were moving to other areas where they could be more at risk of rape, robbery and assault.

The decision by police to target brothels has been controversial. SCD9 specialises in helping people being held against their will or who have been trafficked to work in the sex industry. But critics say it is driven by a mistaken belief that this applies to many women in the brothels. Two high-profile Metropolitan police operations, Pentameter 1 and 2, resulted in 1,337 premises being raided. This led to 232 arrests under Pentameter 1 and 528 under Pentameter 2. More than 250 women were removed and 37 took up services from support projects.

“Research shows no increase in trafficking of women during international sports events,” said a spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes. “Figures on the numbers of women trafficked into the UK have been exposed as false, yet they are still used as an excuse to hound sex workers. Prohibition has never done anything but drive sex workers underground and into more danger. Is the government prepared for further tragedies like Ipswich and Bradford?”

The Met said so far it had not seen any evidence of an increase in trafficking of sex workers in the five Olympic boroughs, but pledged that its officers would continue to try to assist victims and seek the prosecution of those responsible. “We do not believe that tackling vice drives prostitution underground and have not seen evidence of this,” a spokesman said. “Brothels will always need to advertise, which assists us in developing our intelligence picture in this area.”

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It’s never too early to begin panicking about sex trafficking: London Olympics 2012

5 August 2010 in trafficking by laura agustin | 7 comments | print print

Media writers are to blame for spreading at least half the misconceptions about trafficking and the sex industry. The London Olympics are two years away but they loom. Prostitutes will flood Essex. Where does the reported ‘information’ come from? Not from any official or researcher but from a social-work campaigner. It’s irresponsible journalism. (I also find the term rape charity unpleasant.)

The other half of the blame goes to people like the campaigner quoted, head of a local rape crisis centre, who appears to want funding to take trips to foreign lands to do ‘research’ where none is necessary. We’ve just had ample and repeated research-based debunkings from South Africa about the threat of trafficking during the World Cup, and nothing happened in Vancouver, either – which this spokesperson admits, but then she cunningly claims the credit goes to people like herself who planned correctly. What nonsense.

Sex trafficking fear as the Games loom

Sarah Calkin, 30 July 2010, The Echo

Prostitutes are expected to flood south Essex during the 2012 Olympics, a rape charity has warned. With the opening ceremony of the Games now less than two years away, experts at the South Essex Rape and Crisis Centre have already begun investigating what can be done to discourage an influx of prostitutes and protect women from being trafficked into the area. Hundreds of athletes and spectators are expected to descend on the county to train and stay for the duration of the Games.

Sheila Coates, director of the centre, based in Thurrock, said: “Research has shown that during large sporting events, sex crime actually increases because of the large number of participants and a lot of people travelling from country to country. Sadly, pimps see that as a way of increasing their income and we will see women trafficked to the area. . . The centre is preparing to research the possible impact and take the necessary steps to mitigate the impact of any increase in sex trafficking and prostitution in the area. We are going to start looking at research available from the winter Olympics in Canada and the World Cup in South Africa to see what the impact may or may not be. In Vancouver it looks like it wasn’t as big a problem as anticipated because they planned for it and planned it out.”

A spokeswoman for Essex Police said the force had not been made aware of any expected problems.

And speaking of panicking-planning early, campaigners in Glasgow have already begun in regard to 2014′s Commonwealth Games.

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Sex on Sunday: outdoor sex work, police entrapment and cheating as good fun

27 June 2010 in sex work, sundaysex by laura agustin | No comments | print print

kuniyoshi_utagawa_a_street_prostitute
Kuniyoshi Utagawa: A Street Prostitute

Outdoor “street” work question answered by compassionatetara at Bound Not Gagged

. . . People just assume the worst whenever I speak of outdoor work. First, while 3am walking the street in the worst neighborhoods does happen, it’s not as common in street or ‘outdoor’ work as one might think. It’s much more common in big cities, but in smaller cities and towns it’s much less common. (I’ve only worked in smaller towns and cities). So, in outdoor work, there is homeless work, where you are always working, and your clientele is of the lower income variety. (I’ve done this work). It’s mostly a lot of trade for sex work, and not a lot of actual cash. Another type of work is opportunity work, i.e. someone hits on you while you are out doing your normal routine. Most every woman has had the beginnings of this experience but few turn it into an opportunity to make money . . .

What to Do if You’re Charged with Prostitution by David Michael Cantor

One of the strongest defenses to Prostitution is Entrapment. Entrapment occurs when an undercover Officer gets a person to agree to something they would not ordinarily agree to by coercing them or overbearing their will. For example, if an undercover police officer utilizes the service of a “private dancer” or “escort”, and then begins offering extremely large amounts of money to induce the dancer or escort into a sex act, this can be argued as Entrapment.

A different view of cheating and corruption: All’s Fair in Love and Soccer by Henry Carey for Foreign Policy

Cheating and working the referees are part of what make the beautiful game fun to watch.

Africa: A Call for Sex Workers’ Rights in Continent by Chi Mgbako

Despite strong anti-prostitution sentiment on the continent, calls have begun to emerge for the realisation of sex workers’ rights in Africa. South African sex workers have advocated for the decriminalisation of prostitution in their country. There are examples of sex worker collectives forming in Cameroon, Zambia, Kenya and Senegal.

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Debunking the 40 000 prostitutes story again: South Africa World Cup

17 June 2010 in trafficking by laura agustin | 17 comments | print print

When the media contact me I am always wary: how will they distort my words this time? The other day I talked with a Yahoo journalist who has reported a small part of our long conversation faithfully, on the topic of the mythic 40 000 women who will either be trafficked to the World Cup or arrive under their own steam. The funny part of this article is what a sex worker said to him when he asked her about the invasion: I think it’s so unfair. There are lots and lots of beautiful girls in South Africa. Why do they have to come here? Marvellous touch, that.

Debunking World Cup’s biggest myth

Les Carpenter, 10 June 2010, Yahoo News

Johannesburg: Of all the wild, fantastic stories that blossomed in the months before the World Cup, there was the rumor that South Africa would soon be flooded with 40,000 prostitutes. They would come streaming across the border from places like Zimbabwe and Mozambique, all of them ready to satisfy the demands of a half-million soccer fans in an endless futbol orgy.

HIV warnings were sounded. Churches shouted their scorn. And a wary country braced for the impending onslaught of sex-hungry soccer pilgrims. Now, with the World Cup starting on Friday, the fans have poured in on airplanes. There are lines at restaurants and traffic jams on the freeways.

The only thing there aren’t many of is prostitutes.

“We laughed at that [40,000] number,” said a government security source who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly. “There was no evidence there would ever be 40,000 prostitutes.”

The government has been watching, the source said, monitoring ads in sex newspapers, websites on the internet and listening to chatter in the world of human trafficking. It has determined that a few women have arrived in recent days. Investigators have noticed a small spike in ads. Some of these sex workers have come from neighboring countries, usually smuggled in because they believe they can make more money during the World Cup.

But the only evidence of any organized prostitution rings – the kind of movement that would generate great numbers – is that there appear to be more women from Thailand. Yet even then, the source suspects, there are hundreds of them. Not thousands.

“Where are they going to get accommodation?” the source asked. “They have to advertise too and there is no evidence that they are.” More likely, the source continued, are that large groups of fans might bring along one or two women who will be paid to have sex with the men.

Still, the fascination of a sudden arrival of sex workers on an unsuspecting South Africa remains. Especially among the women who stand to be most affected by an onslaught of foreign competition.

“Is it true? Are they really coming?” a prostitute who gave the name “Polly” said as she sat outside the restaurant Tivoli next to the Balalaika Hotel in the upper-class suburb of Sandton one night last week. “I’ve heard there are 40,000 women coming to South Africa for World Cup. But is it true?”

She said she saw an interview on television with a high-ranking government official a few weeks ago – she can’t remember who – and he was asked the question: Were there really 40,000 prostitutes heading to South Africa? He stared at the camera, she said. He said nothing. It was the end of the show, the last question. And slowly the broadcast faded into a commercial.

She took this to mean the rumors were true. “I think it’s so unfair,” she added. “There are lots and lots of beautiful girls in South Africa. Why do they have to come here?”

Apparently they aren’t. It’s just the myth of 40,000.

No one is quite sure where the number originated. But in the past few years, whenever a place holds a great sporting event the rumor of a flood of prostitutes soon blossoms. And for some reason that number is 40,000.

Laura Agustin, a sociologist who studies and blogs about migrant sex workers, calls it “a fantasy number. It has no basis,” she said.

There have never been studies on prostitution and large events, she continued. No reasonable data exists. Rather, people become obsessed with the idea that groups of men traveling for sporting gatherings like the Olympics and World Cup are going to be so desperate for sex that they will demand prostitutes. And therefore truckloads of women have to be brought in.

Officials expected similar problems when the World Cup festivities came to Germany in 2006, but there fears were generally unfounded. Back in 2006, when the World Cup was held in Germany – where prostitution was legal – there was talk that the country would be buried by 40,000 sex workers. Interest in them was said to be great. Yet they mostly wound up sitting around brothels waiting for the parade of willing men that never happened. Later, a study commissioned by the European Union and uncovered by the British internet magazine Spiked found only 33 cases of human trafficking at that time. And just five of those cases turned out to be related to the World Cup.

“I don’t think [soccer] fans should be targeted like this,” Agustin said. And yet they apparently are. “It’s muddled thinking, however,” she wrote on a recent blog post. “Stag parties, in which groups of men ritualistically drink and whoop it up together often have a sexual element, but that usually consists of paying dancers or sex workers to come perform. That’s a contract in a party setting, not the rape of the Sabine women.”

The latest rumor was repeated last month in a story by the Christian Science Monitor, which quoted the magic 40,000 figure and even spoke to a handful of prostitutes from Zimbabwe, one of which suggested she might be able to use her newfound World Cup earnings to buy a car.

“I don’t think there will be that much business,” the government security source said. Thus destroying the myth of a World Cup that was going to be all about sex.

Instead, it will be all about soccer.

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Sex workers travel on their own to the World Cup, and elsewhere

10 June 2010 in sex work, trafficking by laura agustin | 2 comments | print print

How about this reasonable, common-sense story about sex workers from African countries north of South Africa who plan to travel there for possible commercial opportunities? I am told that travellers from richer continents may feel nervous about going to a blacker, poorer country with a high rate of hiv and a history of a certain kind of violence. But this is a relative view, since travellers from poorer countries with different perceptions of violence and hiv may easily see South Africa as a good place to work. Not to mention that many big cities in richer countries offer high levels of scary violence in certain neighbourhoods, so it’s meaningless to generalise about whole countries or continents.

The reporter didn’t have to say ‘feverishly’ in the first line, a typical effort to sensationalise a perfectly ordinary activity: travel. Not ‘trafficking’, unless you start worrying about Melvis’s friends in Johannesburg and the truck drivers that will drive Mwale there. Note the Gender Minister’s fear that the workers may get in under the guise of doing something else and then go into sex work.

Malawi: Prostitutes gear up for WC 2010

Mabvuto Kambuwe, AfricaNews, 18 May 2010

Sex workers in Malawi are feverishly saving towards the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. They are not going to support their teams but to warm the beds of soccer fans who want to quench their sexual desires. One said: “I think time has come for African sex workers to make money through the World Cup.”

The global football showpiece has generally become a common ground for prostitutes to rake in millions from thousands of tourists. This reporter spoke with some commercial sex workers in Malawi about their plans ahead of the World Cup.

Melvis, who stays in the commercial city Lilongwe, said she has arranged with a Johannesburg-based friend to pitch camp with her until the tournament is over. She said: “Although South Africa is very far from here, I am prepared to get there before the kickoff. It will be easy for me to stay in South Africa for more than 20 days because I have a friend who stays in Johannesburg and I am expecting to return home with more money to start another business so that my life will improve”.

Her colleague Febbie Mwale said she cannot allow the money making opportunity during the FIFA main event to slip out of her fingers. She said she is hoping to quadruple her average daily income of US$34 (R250) when she lands in South Africa. Mwale said going to South Africa is no big deal for her. She has been there several times with truck drivers who happened to be her clients.

19-year-old Chrisy said: “If I fail to go to South Africa during the World Cup I hope our business will still improve here at home because some of the fans will be coming to Africa for the first time and they will be interested to visit countries like Malawi. I hope this World Cup is going to work to our advantage because I have been interested to have more clients like whites so I believe during this period I may get some.”

Malawian Minister of Gender and Children Development Patricia Kaliati expressed fears that some of these prostitutes would be in South Africa under the pretext of going for genuine business but would later go into prostitution. . .

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Men and football: a recipe for sexual violence?

8 June 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 5 comments | print print

Men and football: the assumption that these make a super-volatile combination that will lead to violence against women is everywhere, yet there is no real research backing it up. It feels intuitive, something like Oh my god, they get so worked up and nationalistic at those matches, they scream and take off their shirts, and look at how some hooligans bash each other, and they get so drunk they don’t know what they’re doing. Okay, but the connexion with sex is? Some think that these activities involve a rise in testosterone, which could mean fans become rapacious about wanting to have sex, and in their blind fervour go racing off to fuck anything in sight. Or, correlations have been made between drinking alcohol in heavy quantities and becoming aggressive – for some people, not all – but the aggression usually comes in the form of fighting amongst other drinking men. Or is the idea that some general amoral, violent side rises up via the enthusiasm for sport in a way that makes fans want to grab women? Sometimes the assumption is just that when bunches of guys get together they are liable to run amok. The World Cup is feared to bring out the worst in its fans.

It’s muddled thinking, however. Stag parties, in which groups of men ritualistically drink and whoop it up together, often have a sexual element, but that usually consists of paying dancers or sex workers to come perform. That’s a contract in a party setting, not the rape of the Sabine women. It’s certainly true that drinking men in celebrating groups like to flirt at or harrass women, talk about sex to them and tell each other about their sexual exploits. All that can be annoying or threatening but cannot be taken as evidence that these men are more likely to visit sex workers or behave badly with them if they do. And, of course, if they drink enough there is definite evidence that both the ability and desire to have sex diminish.

It seems some are also afraid that fans will contract hiv during the World Cup. Is the assumption that they will lose their heads completely and forget to use condoms, in the general havoc? This stuff gets pretty loony, fitting in with the false claim of 40 000 trafficked prostitutes in 2006.

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