“We Should Rescue Prostitutes From Brothels.”
NOT NECESSARILY.
[Fragment]
On top of arguing for criminalization, some abolitionists agitate for actively removing people from the sex industry –that is, entering brothels in “raids”, pulling sex workers out, and placing them in rehabilitation programs. Proponents of rescues, whose views dominate many anti-trafficking organizations, have secured substantial international funding. The U.S. government, for example, has given grants to organizations like the International Justice Mission (IJM), a faith-based group headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Unit of Northern Thailand, both of which actively promote rescues.
But rescues are often far from
heroic. IJM has been criticized for failing to distinguish between sex workers
and trafficking victims. Describing the response among people pulled from a
Thai brothel in a 2003 IJM raid, a sex worker advocate told the Nation, “They were so startled, and
said, ‘We don’t need rescue. How can this be a rescue when we feel like we’ve
been arrested?’” More recently in Thailand, law enforcement has scrambled to
respond to U.S. criticisms of the country’s anti-trafficking record by stepping
up raids. “[In 2012], the Royal Thai Police ordered all police units to spend
at least 10 days each month doing anti-trafficking work.” Gen. Chavalit
Sawaengpuech told Public Radio International (PRI) this past October. In
effect, PRI noted, the police are “trying to meet a quota… even when there isn’t
data or evidence indicating the sex workers they are rescuing are victims after
all.”
Violence perpetrated by local
authorities during raids has also been documented from South Asia to Africa to
Eastern Europe. In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote in a
bulletin that “research from Indonesia and India has indicated that sex workers
who are rounded up during police raids are beaten” and “coerced into having sex
by corrupt police officials in exchange for their release.” The bulletin added,
“The raids also drive sex workers onto the streets, where they are more
vulnerable to violence.” So rampant have these problems with police become in
Cambodia that, last June, more than 500 sex workers rallied in Phnom Penh,
chanting, “Save us from saviors.”
Also troubling are some of the
rehabilitation centers –run by NGOs, churches, or governments– where “rescued”
sex workers are placed. These centers profess to offer medical care,
counseling, and vocational training. Yet many are known for perpetrating
violence, detaining individuals, and separating them from their families. The
WHO bulletin stated that some Indian and Indonesian sex workers are “placed in
institutions where they are sexually exploited or physically abused.” In
Cambodia, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented beatings, extortions, and
rape at government rehabilitation sites. And in the state of Maharashtra,
India, in addition to holding women for long periods of time, a rehabilitation
home has suggested that marrying them off is a mode of rehabilitation.
The rescue approach certainly
makes for good optics. It has been covered, notably, by Nicholas Kristof of the
New York Times, who live-tweeted a
brothel raid in 2011. And the impulse to protect is surely a noble one. But in
addition to ignoring that some people choose to sell sex, rescues have subjected
sex workers to a whole host of abuses –a fact certainly problematic for the
abolitionists who champion such interventions in the name of human rights.
-Foreign Policy
(Jan/Feb 2014)
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