Startling news are coming from Chinese sex workers that authorities are pursuing them not just for incarceration, but for brutalities that include torture, beatings and detention without trial.
The report has come from Human Rights Watch, a watchdog group whose China director, S. Richardson has detailed the problem in a conference in Hong Kong just last week.
The report on the matter also highlighted how some of the sex workers were sent to re-education camps, where they are sometimes held for years without trial, and there they were often forced to do hard labor.
This problem, the report highlights, is one that is part of a country wide program to crack down on prostitution and pornography. In addition, there is no protection for whistleblowers who come forward to relate abuse in a sex ring setting, who are then arrested along with the others.
Since the Chinese economy has shot into its vertiginous growth pace, prostitution has equally followed suit. There are by some estimates about 4-6 million prostitutes in China. But most of the women who work in this trade do so out of necessity, to escape the grinding poverty people without education or means must endure. Some arrive at a brothel's doorstep after a divorce or being widowed.
This is due in part to the fact that women are illiterate in China at the rate of 2 to 1 compared to men. This gender inequality is present in other aspects of Chinese society.
One of the report's aim is to try to end the criminalization of sex workers, and allow it to be legalized so that some measure of protection be afforded the workers. This also could protect them against violence in the brothels, since reporting to police is impossible.
Source : France 24/ 5.14.13
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