RIGHTS-SPAIN: Sex Workers Decry Crackdown in Madrid

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Mar 31 2004 (IPS) - Prostitutes in Madrid will bring a lawsuit against city authorities for ”perversion of the course of justice” and ”coercion”, in opposition to a municipal campaign aimed at getting sex workers off the street in the centre of the city.

Under the new campaign, police began this week to patrol Montera street 24 hours a day, asking prostitutes, clients and suspected pimps for their identity documents, and inspecting local hotels and pensions.

Ana Botella, the city councillor of Social Affairs (and wife of outgoing Prime Minister José María Aznar), who presented the ”plan against sexual slavery”, said its aim was to harass clients and pimps and provide assistance to women who want to get out of the sex trade.

Prostitution is legal in Spain, and the women will not be arrested. However, they will be encouraged to turn in pimps, and they are offered information and assistance on leaving the sex trade.

Carmen Briz, spokeswoman for Hetaira, an organisation of sex workers and activists that provides assistance to prostitutes, told IPS Wednesday that those named in the legal action will be Botella, Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, and city councillor for Security Pedro Calvo, all of whom belong to the governing centre-right Popular Party (PP).

The campaign was launched Monday on Montera, a street in downtown Madrid located between the Gran Vía and the Puerta del Sol plaza, where the Madrid town hall is located.

In that area, dozens of women ply their trade in the streets, taking their clients to private homes, pensions or hotels in the area, which are also packed with immigrants from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds and nationalities.

Most of the prostitutes are themselves immigrants, many of them undocumented, and a number of them forced into the sex trade against their will.

The city government’s aim is the ”social reinsertion” of sex workers.

A source at the city council office on security told IPS that seven people have been arrested and handed over to the national police, who will send them to court. But none of the detainees were prostitutes, he added.

The city government, with the support of the Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Attention to Prostituted Women (APRAMP), has also parked a van on Montera street to offer support for women interested in leaving the sex trade. Around 100 women have already stopped by for information.

One of them described the idea of ”social reinsertion” as ”a joke.”

”With what they offer us, we would all be back in the streets again in 10 days,” she said.

”Prostitutes are people, and we have human rights that must be respected, and this plan ignores our most basic rights,” said Nereida León, one of the women working on Montera street.

”If they want to catch the pimps, it’s much easier and safer to do it in the ‘clubs de alterne’ (sex clubs), which is where women suffer the worst exploitation,” said another, who preferred not to give her name.

”We are treated in an inhumane manner, as if we were committing a crime because we are picking up clients on the street,” she added.

In a statement to the press released Wednesday, Hetaira said the obligation to exercise prostitution off the streets would benefit the owners of the ‘clubs de alterne’, because they keep a slice of the money the prostitutes earn, and they set their own rules.

Hetaira complained that the local authorities pressure street prostitutes in different ways. ”We are not allowed to just stroll around the area, much less stop and stand on the sidewalks, because of our physical features and our clothing. We are permanently harassed and asked to show our identity cards.”

The chief prosecutor in Madrid, Mariano Fernández Bermejo, said ”prostitution is a legal trade that is not punished under the penal code, and I prefer things to remain that way. If someone wants to penalise it, then they should open up a debate in parliament, and not do it by the back door.”

For its part, the National Association of Sex Clubs (ANELA) is advocating ”regularisation” of the sector, and wants sex workers to be given the right to pay into the social security system and to enjoy coverage by the country’s labour laws.

ANELA argues that if the street prostitutes were employed by its affiliated 1,500 companies, the state would collect more than three billion euros a year – some 3.5 billion dollars – in contributions and taxes.

The ‘guardia civil’, Spain’s militarised police force, estimates that prostitution moves some 21 billion dollars a year in this country of 40 million.

According to the police, there are around 400,000 prostitutes working in Spain. Seventy percent of those who offer their services on the streets are immigrants.

Of the Spanish sex workers, 90 percent are dependent on drugs and 10 percent have been in the sex trade for at least 15 years.

The majority of the immigrant sex workers – from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe – were duped into the sex trade by false promises of decent jobs in Western Europe.

Trafficking rings promise the young women residency permits and jobs in the service sector, usually in restaurants or as domestics.

But once the women reach Spain, the traffickers take away their identification documents, and often rape them before forcing them into prostitution.

The women, who are far from their families, with neither money, a passport nor anyone to help them, are often physically confined to the sex clubs. The few that have been able to escape sexual slavery are given police protection.

In 2002, a specialised police unit in Spain dismantled 16 networks that trafficked and sexually exploited women. Police sources told IPS at the time that most of the leads came from women who were able to get a message past their captors, or who escaped and sought help.

But the mafias involved in the human trafficking business have power, money and good lawyers, who help the traffickers elude legal penalties. The prostitution that provokes the greatest controversy is the ”traditional” manifestation of the trade – on the streets, in parks and other public spaces – even though the number of women involved is far less than in the sex clubs.

The municipal crackdown on prostitution is ”denigrating”, because sex workers are being used ”to stage a political show,” said parliamentary Deputy Inés Sabanés of the United Left coalition, which is based on the Communist Party.

Socialist city councillor Oscar Iglesias also spoke out against the measure that went into effect this week, labelling it ”demagogic”, and calling for a ”real plan” to eradicate prostitution, not only along Montera street but in the entire city.

Hetaira and similar groups are fighting for recognition of the legal and social rights of prostitutes, and for greater respect from society. They also argue that only the women involved can decide whether or not they want to remain in the sex trade.