Women's groups debate pros and cons of sex trade

With the recent re-discovery of illegal prostitutes working the streets of Taipei, women's groups are again discussing the entire concept of prostitution and asking the Taipei City Government to come up with a clear position on the sex industry.

Last Thursday, three Taipei City councilors from the DPP criticized the city government for being negligent in cracking down on the illegal sex trade. Presenting a video as evidence, councilors said illegal brothels were staging a comeback in the city's former red-light district. The councilors said earlier concerns that illegal prostitution might return to Taipei after Ma Ying-jeou took office now seem justified.

Some women's groups shared these concerns. For example, Shen Mei-chen (沈美真), a lawyer and an executive at the Women's Rescue Foundation (婦女救援基金會), said that many women's groups felt that the illegal sex industry had come back to some parts of the city.

Shen said the recent report by the three city councilors revealed that the police were not enforcing the law properly and that policy makers were not thinking things through deeply enough.

Shen said she is in favor of outlawing prostitution entirely, as former Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) tried to do when he banned licensed prostitutes from city streets.

With a year left of a two-year grace period before licensed prostitutes are banned in Taipei, Shen said she is concerned that prostitutes would stay in the sex trade indefinitely if the government doesn't take a firm stand against such work.

"The government should make its stand clear on banning prostitution," she said. "And it should consider prostitution issues as a major part of women's welfare; that is, it should actively guide licensed prostitutes in changing their profession."

To implement such a policy, Shen said the government should also amend existing laws on prostitution. She said that according to the Social Order Maintainance Law (社會秩序維護法), only prostitutes, and not customers, are subject to fines or jail terms when a bust is made.

A spokeswoman for the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (日日春關懷互助協會), a group which supports licensed prostitutes and promotes the legal working rights of women in the sex trade, said that the ineffectiveness of the police crackdown reflects problems with the way the government deals with the sex industry.

Last year the collective held an international seminar on the sex industry, with people from the Philippines and Australia participating.

The Taiwan Gender Sexuality Rights Association (台灣性別人 協會) also believes that the city should re-examine its policies on prostitution.

"Although we were happy to see Mayor Ma implement a two-year grace period for licensed prostitutes a year ago, we still don't know what his stand is on sex workers' working rights," said Wang Ping (王蘋), secretary general of the association.

Wang said that neither the city councilors nor the city government had looked very deeply into the situations of sex workers.

"We are aware that there has been exploitation and abuse by pimps and gangs, but what we should do is to provide aid to empower those who choose sex work for a living," Wang said.

Whether the government decides in the end to ban prostitution or to legalize it by regulating the red light district in Taipei, there should be an open policy debate, Wang said.