Threat to switch off city's red lights
The notorious sex district could be shut down if a clean-up campaigner wins Amsterdam's elections, reports Jason Burke
Sunday February 19, 2006
The Observer
It is saturday night and the sex shops and peep shows are busy. Drunken British men on stag nights, American tourists, loners with collars turned up, all cluster in front of the garishly lit windows to gawp, leer or negotiate with the barely dressed prostitutes behind the glass.
But the lights may soon go out in the windows next to Sexy Land, Chickita's Sex Paradise and the Yam Yam bar. Politicians expected to win power in next month's municipal elections have said that if the De Wallen quarter cannot be cleaned up, it should be shut down.
'If we have a choice of losing a tourist attraction or helping to end the abuse of women, I would rather lose the tourist attraction,' said Lodewijk Asscher, 31, new chief of the city's ruling Social Democrat Party. 'It should not be closed immediately but, if there is no reform, we should gradually try to diminish it.'
Asscher's policies, part of a manifesto for what is likely to be a successful election campaign, have sparked a fierce reaction. Opponents of the plan include defenders of Amsterdam's famous 'tolerance', while experts on human trafficking and representatives of sex workers are - perhaps predictably - divided.
The problem itself is complicated. First, it depends on which elements of the red-light district are being discussed. Since a change in the law five years ago, many of the brothels are entirely legal. There are 180 official 'sex businesses' in the De Wallen quarter, which employ around 2,000 prostitutes who are registered, inspected and, at least theoretically, pay tax.
Petra Timmerman, of the Prostitutes Information Centre, an association based in the red-light district, told The Observer that 'most of those working in legal establishments are working voluntarily. There is an assumption that everybody is exploited and needs "saving". That is not necessarily true.'
Timmerman, 43, said she herself had made a rational decision to work as a prostitute. 'At that stage I wanted more time and this was a way I could earn lots of money in less time. I had an aspiration that I decided to fulfil like anyone else.'
The Prostitutes Information Centre was last week distributing leaflets advertising a 'sex industry open day' aimed, Timmerman said, at countering 'the bad press we have been getting'.
Yet beyond the legalised sector are less well-regulated areas. One problem is European Union labour laws which do not permit non-EU citizens to work. The result is that Eastern European and African women, who make up 47 per cent and 26 per cent respectively of Amsterdam-based prostitutes according to recent government figures, are vulnerable to violent abuse, blackmail and extortion. If they go to the police, as more than 500 did last year, they risk being deported. In Belgium and Italy, residency permits are offered to prostitutes who denounce abuses in the sex industry. There is no such system in Holland.
Anneke Bouman, who helps run a counselling and assistance service for trafficked women, said the idea that the red-light district was an integral part of Amsterdam's tolerant image was 'completely wrong. Many women are very afraid and very anxious.'
Bouman's organisation, HVO-Querido, provides a safe house for prostitutes fleeing violent pimps. According to police sources, various gangs control much of the sex trade in Amsterdam, including Turkish and German groups. Many girls are subjected to serious assaults, several have been killed, others have had the names of their 'owners' tattooed on their skin.
In 2000 the annual turnover of the prostitutes in Amsterdam was estimated at €80 million (£55 million). 'It's a huge market,' said one police source. 'It used to be just Dutch gangs and relatively easy to keep an eye on.
'Now it is more international and very hard to monitor. You have dangerous and armed criminals involved in trafficking very large numbers of girls from poor areas. There is a limit to what the authorities can do without massive resources.' Yet some say that the real problem was a lack of police interest in the plight of trafficked women.
'The police priorities are elsewhere,' said Ruth Hopkins, a researcher based in Holland who has published a book on human trafficking in Europe. 'It makes no sense to shut down the red-light district. They are looking at the symptoms, not the cause. Dutch politics, from left wing to right wing, is all about what looks good on the outside, not about an in-depth approach.'
Hopkins is not the only analyst to see broader trends. Bas Heijne, a columnist for the NRC-Handelsblad newspaper, said Asscher was part of a wave of Dutch politicians 'who are moral, or at least using morality, in a highly dubious sense. They are trying to overcompensate for a lack of moral values over a long period. They have ideas that are not very well thought-out but that they think should be implemented immediately.'
Heijne said a 'reaction against the political correctness of the Seventies and Eighties' is coursing through Dutch politics. A politician in nearby Rotterdam recently suggested compulsory abortions for mothers who could not care for their children. 'That should have caused an outcry, but it didn't,' Heijne added.
Few on the rainy streets of Amsterdam were troubled by the row over the future of the red-light district this weekend. 'At least here it's in the open,' said one American tourist. 'Back home there is prostitution everywhere but everyone pretends it doesn't exist.'
Part of the problem is cultural, points out Asscher. 'It is astonishing,' he said. 'People come to Amsterdam and are happy to pay €25 to have sex with a woman. They wouldn't dream of doing it in their own country.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/st ... 72,00.html
