Sex games keep Athens occupied

With five months to go before the Olympics brings millions of visitors to Athens, the city is preparing to showcase the best it has to offer in wine and song, while wondering what to do about the women.

A row about regulating the country's sex trade has reached an impasse as politicians, prostitutes, feminists and priests wait for next Sunday's elections to throw up a new government, all the while at each other's throats over how to deal with an industry that feeds around 70,000 across Greece.

While authorities, led by Athens' first female mayor, Dora Bakoyianni, say they want to impose tighter restrictions on registered prostitution early to avoid a Games boom, critics say a crackdown will only feed the much larger illicit trade.

"Are we legal prostitutes the problem, when we represent 9 percent of the business out there and the rest is illegal and uncontrollable?" said Dimitra Kanelopoulou, president of the Movement of Greek Prostitutes (KEGE).

The rows centers on a 1999 law which made prostitution a legal profession for men and single women, specifying permits and health checks for sex workers, as well as tight rules on location including a 200m distance from civic buildings such as churches or schools.

The law was not enforced until the middle of last year, when officials revived it for a pre-Games clean-up, saying enforcement would cut the 600-odd brothels operating in the city to 230.

KEGE countered that all the prostitutes in the known brothels had permits and health certificates, and it was only the unworkable location restrictions of the 1999 law that made their houses illegal.

"We pay taxes, 200 euros social security every month, issue receipts and get health checks and still the police come and drag us to the station every other day," Kanelopoulou said.

"Some might soon not bother with permits, post an ad and do it on the sly. They are pushing us to illegality."

The Church of Greece was outraged at what it saw as a bid to licence more brothels, finding unlikely allies in Nordic governments and feminist groups, which wrote to Greece protesting about what they called "Olympic Prostitution."

Denying the charges, the city tried to close down 15 brothels for zoning violations. Prostitutes went on a three-day strike, draping black flags over their windows and threatening to throw themselves off balconies.

A deal was reached when the government pledged to relax the rules, tabling an amendment to ease zoning restrictions, scrap a clause that only single women could get permits, and allow more than one "house" in one building with more than the previously allowed three employees.

Fearing the city might issue permits for larger brothels in hotel-like complexes to cope with demand during the Games, Greek feminists lobbied and finally stopped the procedure in its tracks.

"We want to see the 1999 law annulled. We are seeking legislation that protects sex workers and sex work but does not define it as a profession," said Kety Costavara, co-ordinator of the National Observatory for Combating Violence against Women.

"I mean, what's next, suggesting it to kids in school as a possible job?"