France's macho internal security minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, is currently braying that his government's re-criminalisation of soliciting last year, has reduced the number of prostitutes on French streets by 40%. French law defines soliciting as publicly inciting another person by any means, including by clothing or attitude, to have sexual intercourse, in exchange for financial remuneration or a promise of such remuneration.
Marie-Line Champin of the prostitutes advocacy group Bus des Femmes, disagrees with Sarkovy's claim. "They've moved off the main boulevards and into more secluded spots — the woods, garages, massage parlours. They may be 40% less visible, but there certainly aren't 40% fewer", she told Le Monde on January 14.
A report commissioned by the Paris city council and released last month, also challenges Sarkozy's boast. It concluded, from research conducted among Paris prostitutes, that the law has simply driven prostitution underground.
The report found that many prostitutes now work in the early morning, when most Parisians are sleeping and the streets are empty, or conduct their business in increasingly isolated and deserted spots such as car parks and waste grounds. The inevitable result is that violence from their customers is on the rise. Paris residents no longer see what is happening, which is making "respectable" Parisian residents' groups very happy and young prostitutes very vulnerable.
The report also indicated an increase in police harassment and violence against prostitutes since the introduction of the new law. African women have been particularly targeted and the report contains graphic stories of physical abuse and racist humiliation by police and "confiscation" of money, drugs and condoms.
One woman reported being forced to do the housework in a Parisian police station, another says she was detained by police for four days without food or drink. Police officers are reportedly taking full advantage of the opportunity to demand free sexual services under the threat of criminal charges and deportation.
France's internal security act, passed last year, is a package of laws targeted at the poor and socially excluded, particularly "foreigners". Prostitutes, beggars, street entertainers, gypsies and the "suspiciously handicapped" are now in the sights of Sarkozy's intrepid internal security flying squads, determined to sweep the streets and "protect the borders".
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the wars in the Balkans and the formation of the European Union (under which citizens of the 15 member states are permitted reciprocal rights to work), waves of desperate people have flocked to wealthy western Europe from the countries of eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia, Yugoslavia, Kosova, Russia) and from African countries such as Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
Sarkozy's law is not directed primarily against prostitution (France has a long history of legalised prostitution), but clandestine immigration.
According to the French Communist Party's daily, L'Humanite, of the 15,000 to 18,000 prostitutes in France, nearly 70% are foreign.
This has enabled Sarkozy to pose as a righteous opponent of the trafficking of young girls by swarthy criminals. In his speech to the French National Assembly when his bill was debated in March 2003, he exhorted MPs to think only of the young women's welfare: "If we want to stop this enslavement of foreign prostitutes, we must organise their return in their country of origin. In their country, in their family, they will be able to find a normal life, to leave the odious control to which they are subjected. On our premises, without exception, they are condemned to remain exploited with the hands of the procurers."
French feminists and socialists organised large demonstrations in 2003 against Sarkozy's war on the poor and his reliance on the French brand of not-in-my-backyard-ism. The campaign continues with the current ridicule of his absurd claim of a 40% reduction in prostitution.
Prostitution will only be reduced by a proportionate reduction in poverty and gender inequality.
Karen Fletcher
From Green Left Weekly, February 25, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.