The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) yesterday held a demonstration outside the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), urging it to drop a proposal to create red light districts and instead decriminalize the sex industry.
The MOI earlier this month proposed creating red light districts in which sex workers, clients and brothel operators would be allowed to work.
However, COSWAS members said there was a difference between the ministry’s proposal and what they are asking for.
Holding up placards that read “No penalties for prostitutes and clients,” dozens of sex workers and their supporters demonstrated outside the MOI yesterday morning.
“Our only demand is that the sex industry be completely legalized and recognized as a profession, with neither sex workers nor clients subject to penalties,” COSWAS director Chien Chia-ying (簡嘉瑩) said. “Legalizing the industry within designated red light districts while making it illegal elsewhere is still far from what we’re asking for.”
She said COSWAS was also opposed to punishing independent brothel operators.
The ministry’s statement that it made the proposal based on conclusions reached at citizen conferences this year and last doesn’t make sense, “because most of the people who took part in the conferences supported full decriminalization of the sex industry,” Chien said.
COSWAS also wants a mechanism by which the sex industry could negotiate with local residents to decide on the location of brothels, instead of having the government designate red light districts, Chien said.
An official from the ministry’s social affairs department, Chiang Kuo-jen (江國仁), came out to accept the COSWAS petition on behalf of the ministry.
He declined to make any comment.
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