Sex Workers Demand Law to Protect Their Rights
by Chiara Gnoli, 27 November 2013.
Ammar members protesting yesterday (Photo: Raúl Ferrari/Télam/aa)
Georgina Orellano, the National Coordinator of Ammar, stated: “In the last few years we have been suffering constant persecution, discrimination, abuse, loss of jobs, and police bribery.”
Ammar’s aim through the demonstration was to shed light on the problems sex workers face on a daily basis, including violence and abuse. According to Ammar, a recent crackdown on brothels and the law to criminalise clients are forms of violence towards the sex workers as it denies their self-determination. In Ammar’s online statement, they write: “Banning our right to exercise our work is violence. The impossibility of being able to decide on issues regarding our body is violence…. the constant confusion between trafficking and sex work is violence.”
Orellano stated that the collective does not believe the state helps sex workers as sexual work in Argentina has no legal foundation. She stated that the work “is not prohibited but it’s not permitted” and emphasised that due to this lack of legality there is a void in which sex worker’s rights are denied and their situation is often confused with that of human trafficking victims. Orellano declared that there are many sex workers that become so voluntarily, and are thus in need of protection from criminalisation, discrimination, violence, and abuse.
“Our sector has always been criminalised and stigmatised, there is a lot of prejudice around our work and we wish for society to see us not as victims but as a subjects of rights,” Orellano stated.
Ammar’s protest in the context of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women comes on the same day NGO Casa del Encuentro presented findings on violence against women. According to their findings, a woman is killed every 35 hours in Argentina.
No comments:
Post a Comment