Police in China frequently beat, torture and arbitrarily detain suspected sex workers, often with little or no evidence that they engaged in prostitution, a rights group said yesterday in a report that called on the government to discipline abusive officers.
Officers sometimes detain women only on the basis of their carrying condoms, thus deterring their use among sex workers and increasing the risk of spreading HIV, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. It also condemned forced HIV testing of sex workers by public health agencies and the disclosure of the results to third parties.
The government officially views prostitution as an “ugly social phenomenon” and the solicitation, sale and purchase of sex in China are illegal. However, despite frequent crackdowns, prostitution remains rampant and sexual services are openly offered in massage parlors, karaoke bars and nightclubs.
HRW said they interviewed women who told of violence by police and of being detained following sex with undercover officers.
One anonymous woman cited in the report said she and two colleagues were assaulted by police who “attached us to trees, threw freezing cold water on us, and then proceeded to beat us.”
Other problems are arbitrary detention of sex workers without legal evidence and discrimination by law enforcement officials when sex workers try to report crimes or abuse, the report said. While Chinese law treats most sex work-related offenses as administrative violations, punishable by fines and short periods of police custody or detention, it allows for administrative detention of up to two years for repeat offenders.
The 51-page report, “Swept Away”: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China, focused on women primarily in Beijing who engage in sex work on the streets, in public places such as parks, and in massage parlors and hair salons.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security did not immediately respond to a request for reaction.
HRW called on the government to publicly commit to strict nationwide enforcement of provisions that prohibit arbitrary arrests and detentions, police brutality, coerced confessions and torture, and ensure swift prosecution of abusive police officers. It also called on it to enact legislation to remove criminal and administrative sanctions against voluntary, consensual sex and related offenses, such as solicitation.
“In China, the police often act as if by engaging in sex work, women had forfeited their rights,” HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement accompanying the report. “The government must abandon its repressive laws against sex workers, discipline abusive police and end the suppression of sex workers rights advocates.”
HRW interviewed sex workers, clients, police, public health officials, academic specialists and members of international and domestic non-governmental organizations between 2008 and last year. It focused on interviews with 75 sex workers in Beijing, including 20 detailed interviews with women between the ages of 20 and 63.
All the sex workers they spoke with said they had voluntarily chosen sex work. Factors included poverty, job loss, divorce and lack of economic and educational opportunities for women — particularly in the countryside.
Additional reporting by staff writer
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion