Issue No.17 (April 2006)

Table of Content

“The Documentary: Sisters and Zi Teng”

We spent one year on preparation, such as collecting the stories from the sex workers, writing the script, casting, finding suitable shooting locations. After the final editing and the vetting by the Film Censorship Authority, the film was shown at the Hong Kong Arts Center. It was not a public screening as we only showed it to the shooting crew, Zi Teng staff and the sex workers. Nearly 60 sex workers attended the screening. Most of them enjoyed the film. They found the film realistic and touching, that the stories in the film did relate their life stories. They also gave us many constructive opinions on the film content. For instance, some suggested the incorporation of the migrant sex workers’ stories; some recommended that there should be more details on the issue of robbery which sex workers usually faced at work. In general, we received positive feedbacks from the audience.

On the one hand, we believe that the film is a good medium to further introduce our work and the situation of sex workers to the public. We hope we can give the truest picture of Zi Teng and sex workers to the public. On the other hand, we plan to launch a series of fundraising activities in this year. The public screening of the film is going to be one of our fundraising activities. Hence, we are currently planning to further edit the film, say, adding the responses and discussions of the audience to the film, so that the public can better understand sex workers and our work. The recommendations and opinions of the sex workers definitely inspire us to make the film better. We will let you know about the public screening of the film in our later newsletters.

The First Hong Kong Sex Culture Festival 2006

At the end of February, we joined the First Hong Kong Sex Culture Festival, which was organized by the Hong Kong Sex Education Association. Different organizations participated in this outdoor carnival-like event. With the participation of a number of teenagers and student volunteers, we not only set up a booth, but we also organized a fashion show as well as participated in the open forum to discuss the Hong Kong sex/gender culture with other organizations at the carnival. We set up a game corner at the booth for the public to understand more about sex tools and contraceptive tools. We also displayed the newspaper clippings about the violence sex workers experienced in Hong Kong and China, to let the public understand more about the plights and inhumane treatment sex workers encountered. At the open forum, we talked about the current situation of male sex workers in Hong Kong. We also talked about the abuse of police power and the stereotypes of female sex workers.

The most exciting event on the day was the fashion show we co-organized with the Women Coalition of Hong Kong, which is an organization for non-heterosexual women, and some local gay men. In order to further convey the message of Sexual Diversity, educating the public that sexual practices can be in many forms with commercial sex as one kind only, we cross-dressed and acted as local and migrant sex workers, to voice our messages in the show. We were pleased to receive positive responses from the public. The cross-dressers were particularly popular. Many people from the audience took photographs with them. Our activities also drew much attention from the local media. They were widely reported in newspapers.

Apart from the carnival, there was an indoor exhibition in the First Hong Kong Sex Culture Festival. We also took part in it. We invited Dr. Yau Ching from the National Chengchi University of Taiwan to write an article on film culture and sex work. At the same time, Dr. Chan Shun Hing from Lingnan University of Hong Kong hosted a seminar titled “Cross-Regional Culture and Sex work” for us. She made use of the film ‘Durian Durian’, which described a girl from Mainland China working as a call girl in Hong Kong, to discuss with the audience the cultural differences between local and migrant sex workers. More than 40 people attended the seminar.

A few local and migrant sex workers joined this seminar with us. They expressed their opinion on the film. Some also discussed the migrant sex worker issue with Dr. Chan and other audiences. In fact, there is a discourse saying that the migrant sex workers pose threats to the livelihood of the local sex workers, that the latter never accepts the former. However, we got another picture from this seminar, that local sex workers do empathize with and accept the migrant sex workers. For instance, one ‘one woman apartment’ woman said she understood how migrants had to endure an undesirable working environment; another stated that she felt no competition from the migrant workers, neither would she feel having higher social status than the migrants; one suggested that local sex workers would ‘automatically become’ migrants if they move to work in another territory. She even shared her experience of working as a migrant sex worker in Japan at the seminar.

We are glad to see that both local and migrant sex workers are willing to voice their opinions at the seminar. They are not afraid to speak in front of the public and the well educated. Besides, they are willing to talk about their experiences as sex worker. This shows how a public forum of this nature benefits the sex workers, that it helps to encourage the sex workers to speak up. They can thus further build up their confidence and the capacity to face others.

We always believe that if there is more room and more diversity for sex-related discussion in society, it will be more likely for the public to accept commercial sex, including sex work. However, it is sad and undeniable that Hong Kong is still sexually conservative, that a sector of the population still finds it difficult to accept things related to sex. On the carnival day, we displayed our ‘bra mat’, which is an artwork making up of around 20 bras, along the road. We tried to convey the message that ‘Sex is a natural thing’ through the bra mat. Nonetheless, an inspector from the Food Environmental and Hygiene Department ordered us to remove the bra mat, claiming that our bra mat is a kind of ‘commodity’ but not a piece of artwork, and we were not supposed to display any ‘commodity’ along the road. He threatened to take us to the police station, but failed to explain which ordinance he was going to use for conviction. In fact, we did not put any price tag on the bra mat. Neither was there anyone asking the price of the bras. We were surprised that the officers saw the bra mat as a ‘commodity’. This shows how conservative and narrow-minded the government officials in Hong Kong are and that they over-reacted to sex culture. To them, a bra is always a bra, which will easily arouse men’s sexual and erotic desires, endangering the public moral order. In order to maintain the public moral order, it is thus necessary for them to remove all the ‘potential threats’. They recklessly identify sex as a cause of moral disorder. This narrow-mindedness undoubtedly constitutes a great obstacle to greater sexual diversity. Needless to say, it is necessary to change the authorities’ attitudes towards sex. They should be also provided with sex/gender trainings so as to increase their sex/gender awareness, to make them more open-minded towards sex.

As a non-government organization, we well understand how important and essential it is to develop network with other different organizations. A stable and close network means greater strength and bargaining power to negotiate with, or even pressurize the authorities to change their policies. We have been trying to maintain a friendly relationship with different local and overseas organizations and individuals in different ways. Joint statement and protests are of course two common ways we maintain the linkage with other organizations. We also adopted ‘peaceful’ means to maintain the linkage with others.

Since April, we collaborated with the People’s Radio Hong Kong (www.prhk.org) and the Women Coalition of Hong Kong to produce an online radio program. The program is co-hosted by different sex workers, Zi Teng staff, and the Woman Coalition of Hong Kong. However, due to insufficient manpower and time, we can only host the program monthly, talking about sex work and Zi Teng. We introduce and describe in each program the different aspects of sex work, such as the experiences with different customers, the current working situation of sex workers in different sex sectors of the sex industry, the development of different sex sectors in the sex industry.

Besides, in order to increase and improve the interactions between sex workers and the public, we encourage phone-in or online discussions during the program. Through hosting a radio program and directly responding to the public enquiries, sex workers build up their confidence and self-esteem.

Zi Teng Activity Center

March 19 was definitely a big day to Zi Teng. It was the grand opening of our new activity center. We invited our friends to visit the center. More than 70 guests joined us for the Opening Ceremony. We had the ‘cut the roast pig’ ceremony, which is common in the Chinese communities to celebrate a good start of an event, a shop, and/or a business.

Most of the guests were impressed by our new center, particularly by the sex tool exhibits. The exhibits are collected by Zi Teng staff from different places. Some are given by friends from different parts of the world. Our exhibits include sex toys, sex education kit, condoms and lubricants, sex-related decors and artworks, sculptures, posters and paintings. We also set up a book corner, where we collected a series of books and magazines discussing sex work and sex. Besides, in order to let the visitors more clearly understand the working environment of ‘one woman apartment’, we set up a corner which looks like a ‘one woman apartment’. In order to make it approximate the local ‘one woman apartment’ in reality, we put two plastic dolls named ‘John’ and ‘Mary’ there as well. The setting is now more interesting and realistic.

As Hong Kong is short of land supply, and sex work-unfriendly, the government cleared many districts, where many different sex industries used to flourish, for more lands for redevelopment and district restructuring. Many ‘yellow signs’ (the shop sign of brothel) were also removed to make the community look nicer. In order to let the public, particularly the younger population, to know the “removed part” of the history of the Hong Kong sex industry, and to further decorate our activity center, we make a ‘yellow sign’ and permanently place it in our center.

Apart from the special setting and decorations at our activity center, we organized some special activities for our guests. One was the performance of our newly formed Zi Teng choir. They sang us “Beauty Zi Teng”, the song of Zi Teng. Another was the first fundraising activity in this year. We made a new donation box, which will permanently be placed at our center. We are glad that we received substantial supports on that day. Sure we will continue to organize more different social activities and fundraising activities in the future. We will let you know the further information in the forthcoming newsletters.

One of the main reasons we organize the said exhibition is to provide a platform for the public to learn, think and talk about sex. We would also like to create more opportunities for the public to feel, come close to sex-related culture. Hong Kong people are often thought to be open-minded or westernized, but the truth is that they are never sexually open-minded. Many of them are embarrassed to openly talk about sex, and are conservative towards sex and love. Such sexually conservative attitudes can even be found among young people. According to one small-scale survey done by the monthly magazine ‘U-beat Magazine’, more than 60% of 605female students from one local university do not accept pre-marital sex. About 90% of the respondents tell that they will reassess their boyfriends if they found their boyfriends had sex with his ex-lovers. More that 70% believe that lovers should not touch each other unless they have been dating for 1 year or above, while more than 30% suggest that kissing can be allowed if they have been dating with lover for more than a year. This survey gives us some idea how sexually conservative Hong Kong people can be. Even the younger population, who are often more open to new ideas and concepts, use only one standardized lens to view chastity, love and body, forgetting that there are other viewing lenses.The special importance they place on chastity, a concept contradictory to the job nature of sex workers, shows that people with such sexually conservative attitudes may find it difficult to accept sex workers and sex work. To make it easier for people to accept sex work and sex workers, or commercial sex, it is thus necessary to change their mind; to make them understand more about the different lenses to view chastity, body, love, sex, and so on. The sex exhibition and the set up of our activity center is one channel we would like to provide for the sexually conservative population to get close to more different lenses.

Discussion on the Revision of the Police Code of Practice

Since 2003, Zi Teng has been receiving numerous complaints by sex workers against undercover police officers, who receive sexual services in the course of investigating sex work-related offences. These services range from masturbation and oral sex to full sexual intercourse. We demand the Police to revise and publicize the Police Code of Practice, to disallow the undercover agent to receive any kind of sexual services in the course of investigation. After years of protests, demonstrations, lobbying and advocacy, we finally got the help from some friendly legislators to take the issue to the Legislative Council Security Panel. We hope that the legislators can pressurize the Police to revise the Code of Practice and to stop the undercover agents to receive free sex services.

In order to make stronger arguments, we sought legal advice from a professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong and a barrister. Both did not agree that the receipt of sexual services is necessary as suggested by the Police. They said that the police agent does not necessarily need to receive sexual service to gather sufficient evidence for the sex worker-related offences they are investigating.

On April 4, Zi Teng staff, our legal advisors and volunteers attended the Security Panel meeting. On one hand, we provided statistics to the legislators showing how sex workers were abused by the police agents; on the other hand, our legal advisors helped us to raise and explain our concerns from a legal perspective. We aimed to have a clear reply from the police representatives sitting for the meeting telling us how and when they will follow up on our requests. In the meeting, we got the support from legislators Margaret Ng, Albert Ho Chun-yan and Leung Kwok-hung to pressurize the police to explain why they allow the undercover agents to receive free sex services. In fact, the police representatives failed to well answer the queries from the legislators and our legal advisors. They simply responded in an ambiguous way, avoiding answering our queries directly. Legislator Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, and Leung Kowk-hung expressed their discontent and disappointment to the police responses respectively. Eventually, legislator Margaret Ng demanded the police to provide more background information on the cases which involved sex workers, such as, the number of police agents who received free masturbation in the course of investigation; what sex workers are charged with. Legislator Margaret Ng was so angry with the police representatives that she even suggested denouncing the police in the next Security Panel meeting.

On the whole, though we failed to make the police tell us clearly how and when they will follow up on our requests, we are glad that the issue of the abuse of police power against sex workers and the request to revise the Police Code of Practice is taken to the Legislative Council. This enables us to have greater strength to pressurize the police to change their policy in future. However, the attitude of the chairperson, Legislator James To Kun-sun, of the Security Panel did disappoint us. To a certain extent, we expected the chairperson to remain neutral in the discussion. Yet, legislator James To clearly showed us how he supported the standpoints of the police. He even expressed his worry that the revision of the Police Code of Practice may increase the difficulties for the police to fight against crime as well as maintaining the social order.

In fact, stopping the police officers from abusing their power against sex workers by revising the Police Code of Practice and enabling the police to maintain the social order are two different things. The former mainly aims to restore sex workers to their dignity and basic human rights. Is it not one of the responsibilities of the police to protect the basic rights of the citizens? Why are sex workers not protected by the police? Are their basic rights different from the basic rights of other people? Is it a must to sacrifice sex workers’ basic rights for the sake of maintaining social order?

Certainly we will continue to collaborate with different organizations and legislators to make the police clearly explain and revise their Code of Practice. We will let you know more about this in later newsletters.

Zi Teng’s standpoints in regard to the Police undercover operations

1. The sole objective of the exercise is to request for amendment of the Police internal guidelines in relation to the undercover policemen’s receipt of sexual service in operations.

2. The basic premise of the request is that people who provide sexual services are human beings who are entitled to basic respect as a human being. They should not be subject to abuse, in particular by individual policeman who could take advantage in the course of their work of criminal investigation. It is even more objectionable for the Police Force to openly condone such abuse through unjustified guideline.

3. As the Police guidelines now stand police agents are prohibited from receiving sexual services in terms of sexual intercourse of any kind and oral sex. The reasons for the prohibition are best known to the Police. It is surmised that the reasons are,

   1. The receipt of such activities is not necessary in the course of collecting evidence for the purpose of laying charges against possible criminals in relation to the related criminal charges.

   2. The condoning of the receipt of such services is liable to abuse by the police agents for self gratification for free, for instance.

   3. The avoidance of receipt of such services can best safeguard the interests of both the service providers and the police agents in terms of hygiene and their respective dignity.

4. It is submitted that the service of masturbation is a kind of sexual activity which by nature is no different from any other sexual services. It involves intimate physical body contact between the persons, possible interchange of body fluid and possible gratification. To single out masturbation among the other sexual services and treat it as something different makes no logical sense.

5. All the reasons given by the Police for not allowing intercourse and oral sex to be received by police agents apply equally well to the service of masturbation. In terms of the reasons postulated in paragraph 3 above, again there is no difference between masturbation and other sexual services.

6. In the past the Police has claimed that to disallow receipt of service of masturbation may inhibit the investigation process carried out by the police agent. There is never any or any good explanation to make good that statement. If the investigation is in relation to unlicensed massage establishment the evidence is enough when a half naked police agent receives massage of his body. If the investigation is in relation to vice establishment or living on the earnings of prostitution the evidence will be good enough when a naked police agent and a naked or half naked prostitute begin to have physical body contact coupled with circumstantial evidence such as the presence of condoms, towels, tissues and discussions of prices and services to be rendered.

7. All in all, if the police could successfully collect enough evidence in relation to the relevant criminal charges without the processes of intercourse and oral sex, it does not make any sense to assert that the receipt of masturbation services is necessary in order to collect evidence or that disallowing receipt of such services will hinder police investigation. The police simply fails to make good any case of distinguishing masturbation from the other sexual services disallowed.

8. In the premises, there should be clear guideline from the police that the receipt of the service of masturbation as one kind of intimate sexual services should be avoided and disallowed in the course of police agents’ investigation.

Memo from Associate Professor Simon Young of Faculty of Law

Submissions to the Legislative Council’s Security Panel on 4 April 2006 about the “Police undercover operation for vice activities”

Simon NM Young, Associate Professor and Acting Director of the Center for Comparative and Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong

This memo contains our preliminary views on the legal implications of this police conduct and focuses specifically on the following issues:

1. Is it necessary for undercover agents to receive sexual services in order to gather sufficient evidence for the prostitution-related offences they are investigating?

2. Is the receipt of sexual services by undercover agents illegal?

3. Can the practice of receiving sexual services ultimately jeopardize the criminal investigation?

4. By receiving sexual services, has the undercover agent breached any ethical standards (either according to those of the Hong Kong Police or other international standards)?

Brief Summary

We believe the practice of undercover agents receiving sexual service in generally unnecessary (or can otherwise be avoided) for proving prostitution-related offences in Hong Kong. The practice carries with it the risk that the agent may commit various criminal offences. Aggressive police tactics, which induce the commission of an offence, may potentially halt a prosecution. Even where the practice is passive and not illegal, it is probably considered unethical police conduct by international standards, particularly when it is unnecessary or done repeatedly before an arrest is made. To safeguard its reputation, it is highly recommended that the Hong Kong Police Force adopt a clear policy against this practice by its undercover agents.

China and Macau Program

Qingdao and Macau

At the end of March, Zi Teng staff went to Qingdao to provide trainings for the service providers. They taught the service providers how to further continue and develop the programs. Some sex workers from Qingdao also shared their comments and views on the sex worker service and program. Through the training of service providers, we further consolidated the linkage with our program partners, also we further changed their attitudes towards sex workers and sex worker programs. Most of all, we are able to train them how to continue the program. The service providers can then develop and manage the program on their own in future. This enables better services and supports for the sex workers. Besides, Zi Teng staff was invited by the University of Macau to give a talk on the current situation of sex industry in Macau. One Macau volunteer also shared her views on sex workers with the students. Through giving a talk to university students, not only did we further introduce our work to the public, we were also able to recruit more volunteers to continue to help in our outreach work in Macau

Beijing and male sex worker program in China