Local Sex Workers/Advocacy

The Second Year after Li Yuen Yee’s Death

Two years has passed after Li Yuen Yee killed herself upon the framing of the police. The Coroner’s Court finished its hearing in May last year. We witnessed how inconsistent the court statement provided by the police officers were, and that some facts were hidden (such as the use of condom). We also witnessed how the sergeant was shielding his subordinate. Her family filed a complaint to the Complaints Against Police Office (CAPO) in late 2005, and eventually got a reply this year stating that the complaint was handled to the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) for endorsement. Nonetheless, IPCC has not yet made up their mind to endorse the case. Neither did CAPO report anything about the investigation to Li’s family.

False accusation against sex workers based on condoms

This is the case we recently collected.

May (pseudonym) works at a massage parlor. One day, a customer received her massage service for one hour, he also asked May to provide him sexual service with additional HK$300. May turned him down because she was having period. Later, several policemen entered and May realized that her customer was an undercover police officer. May was charged of ‘soliciting for immoral purpose’. During the course of detention, she was strip-searched for three times. The police also framed up by putting two condoms into her handbag.

Though it is crystal clear that the undercover police is the one to do the solicitation, that he is the one who breaks the law, May is still found guilty. She is sentenced to two-month imprisonment, with the undercover officer left May an arrogant word at the court, “you can never compete with the police”.

The maximum penalty for ‘soliciting for immoral purpose’ is six-month imprisonment, but sex workers are often severely punished. They will often be sentenced to two-month imprisonment.

Even though charging sex workers with condoms discourages them much from using condoms, exposes them more to STD and HIV/AIDS infection. Nevertheless, the police is still framing and trying to eradicate sex workers with this practice. We really would like to know: when will the police stop abusing their power?

Condom is just a tool to protect you and your partners. We should not let the police misuse it to frame sex workers. We should further stop seeing it as something evil or unethical.

Try now to see condoms as something very ordinary, which is commonly found in daily life. We are going to have the ‘One Person One Condom’ Campaign, in which we will start distributing free condom cards to the public on November 30. We sincerely hope that everyone including men and women, the elderly and the young ones, can change their attitudes towards condoms, stop seeing condoms or people carrying condoms as evil spirits.

Against the police strip-search

A few months ago, several young activists, who concern much the environment conservation and cultural heritage, are arrested by police for their attempt to stop the redevelops from tearing down the old establishments. During the course of detention and investigation, they are strip-searched and denied of the right to make phone calls. Some women activists are even harassed sexually. They are particularly discontent towards the part of strip-search, which should be done on those who look like carrying weapons, drugs, or things likely to make someone hurt. This issue arouses much attention from some legislative councilors, who convene a special meeting at the Security Panel of the Legislative Council on October 30.

As the issue of police abuse is always our main concern, we were invited to join with other local organizations and groups to pressure the authority to pay attention on the issue. This is the first time the issue is raised by non-sex workers concern organization, and we are really glad that there are more different groups such as religious groups, women groups concerning it. You may often hear us of reprimanding the abuse of police power against sex workers. Some people sometimes do not believe much in this, as Hong Kong Police Force enjoys a good reputation in the world. Yet, what has happened this time on some young activists does make more people believe us, that the abuse of police power against sex workers is neither a myth nor exaggeration. Rather, this is an undeniable fact.

Sure we will continue to concern the abuse of police power with other groups and organizations.

Migrant Sex Workers in Hong Kong

Migrant Sex Worker challenging the court decision

Though we have been striving to increase migrant sex workers’ rights consciousness, they are often unable to execute their rights under police threats. They usually admit guilty to shorten the length of detention even though they are innocent. However, it is glad to share with you that there is one migrant woman confident enough to stand up for her reputation and rights.

Jane (pseudonym) was a middle-aged woman. She got married with her husband for half a year. Though she had not yet granted the permanent resident status, she could visit her husband in Hong Kong every 3 months. One day she went out for breakfast. She suddenly found a man following her. She was very afraid and went home immediately. The man did not give up and kept following her. Before Jane arrived home, the man suddenly said to Jane, ‘I am a policeman. You are under arrest.’ Jane was then brought to the police station. The police officers handed a statement to her, but Jane refused to sign on it and insisted to call a lawyer. She waited at the police station for 12 hours and finally she was able to do the statement with her lawyer.

Since Jane was only coming to Hong Kong for family reunion, she was wrongly charged. However, her husband refused to be her witness. Even though Jane could provide much evidence to prove her innocence, she still lost the case. Nevertheless, she was still courageous and confident enough to challenge the court decision. She was eager to protect her reputation and rights that she was willing to take the case to the Court of Appeal, and we will continue to assist her with our Migrant Sex Workers’ Rights Reserve Fund, which was set up in May 2007.

The Court of Appeal is still considering her case. We will let you know how her case goes afterwards.

China project

Mekong Region Survey

Zi Teng completed the survey on the situation of migrant sex workers in China, including the sex workers from Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and other countries. We find in this survey that there are quite a lot of young girls being sold in the region. Many of them are under the age of 18. Some are only 10 years old. The girls are often sold to several brothel owners or ‘husbands’ within a short period.Moreover, the number and situation of sex workers change greatly dependent upon the contextual changes in the area. For instance, the number of Burmese sex workers staying in Ruili has dropped sharply and they have started to move to work in other cities after the closures of the mineral mines, the Burmese sex workers often easily turn to drugs because of the frequent selling and buying of drugs in the region. Sex workers can easily buy drugs at very low price. In fact, migrant sex workers in the Mekong region are generally very unfamiliar with self-protection. They are always exposed to abuse, exploitation and trafficking. It is thus necessary for us to provide more supports and information for the sex workers in the Mekong region.

Macau project

Survey on sex workers in Macau

The Chitang Women’s Association, which was set up in 2006 with the support of Zi Teng, completed the survey on the situation and needs of migrant sex workers in Macau. The respondents include street-based sex workers, sex workers working in guesthouses and in one-woman apartment, who come from Mainland China and work in Macau illegally

According to the findings, most of the respondents come from the rural areas in China, where many of them are housewives with no income. Some work on farms or in factories, but earn very little each month. They leavehome out of financial difficulties. They choose to workin Macau mainly because they can spend the least totravel to Macau. Most of them areself-employed, but they do not charge morethan 100RMB per service because of theirolder age. They can only work formore than 8 hours to secure theirincome. The majority can seldominsist to protect themselves, saythrough the use of condoms, as theywant to secure their business or to avoidviolence from the customers. They are then greatlyexposed to sexually transmitted diseases. If theyknow they are infected, many of them will go tothe doctor only after they return home to get rid of the expensivemedial fees in Macau. This not adversely affects their health further, this may also endanger the community health.

Since sex workers work illegally in Macau, they can hardly be protected by the law. They easily face exploitation and abuse, particularly those from customers and Macau police. Among one-third of the respondents were arrested by the police even they are not working. They are often treated cruelly and inhumanly during the course of detention, such as police violence, being forbade to call the lawyer, being forced to sign the statement. Neither do they understand their basic rights nor the complaint system. Since they fear of police retaliation and are not familiar with the Macau context, they are often abused by Macau police. Half of them hence find the Macau law unfair. They cannot find any way to understand the Macau law and context. This only exposes them greatly to the disadvantaged position.

To better the situation of migrant sex workers, and to cater to their needs, it is thus important to arouse more care from the Macau public. The more concern is aroused, the more will the groups and organizations in Macau join us to provide supports for these women.

Trafficking

As more sex workers in Hong Kong and China are leaving home and moving to work in other overseas regions, we strive to increase our understanding in migration and trafficking. In November, we attended the following conferences.

The Impact of Anti-trafficking measures on Human Rights around the world

During this meeting, which was convened by the GAATW (Global Alliance Against Traffic of Women) in Bangkok, we not only developed closer linkage with other overseas groups and organizations by sharing with them our Mekong survey, we also obtained the hosting organization’s evaluation report on the anti-trafficking measures of eight countries and its recommendations to better the supports for trafficked people including sex workers.

We are really glad that the report does point out in the conclusion how current anti-trafficking measures are not sufficient to assist the trafficked, and what has to be changed, such as well-informing the trafficked which service and support they can obtain upon their returning home, repealing the regulations which allow for the detention of people who have been trafficked. To us, the provision of tangible support for the needed is always the most important, regardless of her/his status. Whether that is a migrant or trafficked person, we believe that we should pay the same attention and concern. No matter that is a migrant or trafficked person, it is equally harmful to penalize her/him upon the return home.

In general, we sincerely believe that we will develop better support for the trafficked people and migrants with more different groups and organizations after this conference. As long as there is more trust and collaboration between the groups and organizations in different parts of the world, the hardships and discrimination against the trafficked or migrants will eventually fade away.

The Greater Mekong Sub-Regional Seminar on Protecting Children
from Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation in Tourism

The COMMIT Proceedings are a compilation of the events that took place during the three days of intensive interaction in October 2004, among the six governments of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) on the issue of human trafficking. Representatives came united in their goal of making a difference in the fight against trafficking in persons in all its forms.

The Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking (COMMIT) seeks to provide the basis for a strengthened regional multi-sectoral response to trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. The initiative began in 2003 with Preliminary Round Table Discussion by governments of the GMS is a concerted sub-regional specific approach to combat human trafficking.The COMMIT Proceedings have been compiled by theUNIAP Secretariat to reflect this commitment andgenuine wish by the nations of theSub-region to resolve this threatto human rights, human dignity, andhuman security.

The six governments setup the Sub-regional Plan of Action (SPA) forcooperative endeavors against humantrafficking for the period 2005-2007. The SPAfocuses primarily on activities of a regional and cross-bordernature and builds bilateral linkages, and those betweengovernments, UN agencies, international and nationalnon-governmental organizations and other actors. It focuses mainlyon 9 areas of intervention, with the cooperation with tourismsector as one of them. The meeting that Zi Teng attended this timewas based on such cooperation. It aimed to exchange lessons learned from GMS countries on working with the tourism sector to address trafficking and child sexual exploitation in tourism, and to promote the development of national strategies to combat trafficking and child sexual exploitation in tourism, which complements any future regional collaboration.

However, the statements made at the meeting by the representative from China did shock us. He denied that there was not any children sexual exploitation for the purpose of tourism in China, as those buying sex from children are not tourists. When asked with the UN-adopted definition, he stated that the definition the Chinese government adopts is not the same as the UN one. In fact, as far as we know in the newspapers, there were many cases in which children under 18 were sold to the brothels in other Chinese provinces and cities. What the representative said basically suggests to us that the Chinese government is reluctant to address to the issue of children sexual exploitation. The facts are right there, but the officials turn blind eye to them. Unless the officials are courageous to address to the issue, the combating measures against children sexual exploitation will not help much.

Gender equality

Differences and contradictions between the two sexes

As you may know that Zi Teng has started to organize different sex education workshops to promote the gender equality concept as well as to increase the public awareness in gender and sex. At the workshops, we find that there is much distance in the expectation of men and women on their partners. For example, while women enjoy and expect more communication with their partners, men are less considerate to their partners. Women will suppress their wants and needs, even in very reluctant way, for the sake of their partners, but men will often prioritize their desires and needs, make their partners to sacrifice for them. To some extent, men’s self-centeredness may explain why some of them do treat sex workers impolitely and cruelly. They probably have no idea how to get along well with sex workers, ignore the feelings of sex workers in the same way as they do to their partners. They may even have never thought of why they should respect their partners or sex workers. In other words, as long as men are unable to respect their spouse and partners, sex workers are more likely to be badly treated by their customers. If men learn how to respect and be considerate to their partners, it is more likely that they show respect to sex workers, who are predominantly women, during the course of sex trade.

Examples of the different expectations between men and women:

To reduce the dangers and threats of sex workers from customers, the education of gender equality thus seems very important. To address to the issue, you will see us organize more education workshops and activities for men and customers in future.

Public Education

Discrimination in the academia

Every year, Zi Teng has been invited to give talks and lectures at different universities and education institutions. Certainly the attitude towards sex work and sex workers in the academic circle has greatly changed. They now have more concerns on the issue that many of them carry out researches about sex work and sex workers. Some teachers and students may still find it difficult to recognize sex work as work, but they are willing to listen to sex workers’ stories. These do encourage us to continue our work.

However, bias and discrimination never fades out. We recently gave talk to a class of generation education at one local university with one woman sex worker. The students were very unfriendly and showed no respect to us. For instance, while we explained how sex workers protect themselves from violence and diseases, the students seemed paying no attention to what we said but insisted that sex workers transmitted the diseases to the community. Some of them even argued with us. Neither did the lecturer look friendly to us. She often distorted our explanations. Most of all, she not only failed to build up or facilitate a constructive and rational dialogue between the students and us, what she said also increased the students’ resentment in our presentation. For example, when the woman sex worker voiced out her opinion in a strong and confident way, the lecturer distorted her wordings and told her students that sex workers ‘had to pretend’ to be strong because they had long time been suppressed in the society.

The main reason we give talks at different tertiary institutions is to present the unseen side of sex workers to the academia, say, sex workers are not necessarily timid and unconfident, they are still eager to speak for themselves despite of the public bias and suppression, they have their own thoughts and opinions. However, the interpretation of the above lecturer may really create very negative image for sex workers. The students may wrongly generalize that sex workers are always suppressed, or they may believe that sex workers are just ‘pretending’ to be confident and insistent. As a lecturer or teacher, she/he should at least try to maintain the lecture order, but not stirring up more arguments or resentment. She/he should also try to facilitate students to reflect on the presentations, instead of imposing her/his own thoughts on the students.

Yet, after this lecture, we do understand more clearly that we should continue to do the public education. The presentation and sharing of sex workers themselves during a lecture or in a public forum is particularly important. The more they speak of their experiences and stories, the more the public understands the different sides of sex workers and the industry, eliminating the stereotypes and generalization of sex workers and the sex industry.

List of Donors (September/2007 – October/2007)

We apologize for any omissions!!