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The end of hypocrisy - Germany has a new anti-prostitution law

Published on 28 June 2013 by Doña Carmen

On the night of Thursday to Friday, 28.06.2013, the German Bundestag passed, in its 2nd and 3rd readings, the "Draft of a Law to Combat Human Trafficking and Monitor Prostitution Establishments" put forward on 4 June 2013 by the CDU/CSU and FDP parliamentary groups. The implementation of the anti-prostitution EU Directive 2011/36/EU was the welcome occasion for a massive restriction of the constitutionally protected right to freely practise a profession in sex work. The core of the new law is a trade-law regulation of prostitution, classifying prostitution establishments as "trades requiring supervision" under § 38 of the Trade Regulation Act (Gewerbeordnung).

The new law is publicly advertised and marketed as "equal treatment under trade law" for the prostitution trade and as an "improvement" of the framework conditions of sex work in prostitution. None of this is true.

In fact, the trade-law regulation of prostitution now passed constitutes a massive interference with the constitutionally guaranteed right of sex workers, too, to practise their profession without hindrance. Instead of more rights for sex workers in prostitution, the focus is once again - without any factual justification - on more powers of official and police control and surveillance directed against those affected.

Under the pretext of implementing EU Directive 2011/36/EU and combating so-called "human trafficking" more effectively, what is really happening is the dismantling of the Prostitution Act passed in 2002. That law - whatever necessary criticism it drew - stood for a form of legalisation of prostitution. After just 11 years and an excessive media campaign against legalised sex work in prostitution, the 2002 Prostitution Act has now been substantially hollowed out. It turns out to have been an accident in the history of German prostitution policy.

It is also the end of hypocrisy: the promise of a legalisation of prostitution corresponding to the legitimate interests of sex workers has been broken by parliament with this latest law. Unlike the 2002 Prostitution Act, which was above all conceived as a "showcase law" and will henceforth be kept as a fig leaf, the trade-law regulation now to come into force, classifying prostitution establishments as "trades requiring supervision" under § 38 of the Trade Regulation Act, will have an extraordinarily practical (negative) effect: the expansion of official and police powers of control will prove to be a means of a politically desired maximum containment of prostitution.

Hence too the unmistakable deep satisfaction among opponents of prostitution of every stripe at the restriction that sex workers' practice of their profession in prostitution will experience under the new law.

Contrary to the official phrase of a "trade-law equal status" for prostitution created by the law, in reality this is a continuation and expansion of the discrimination against sex work in prostitution, disguised under trade law.

The following seven points speak in favour of this view:

(1)No factually substantiated justification for the law:

There is no substantive justification for the classification of prostitution establishments as "trades requiring supervision" under the law. The explanatory memorandum for the expansion of control and supervisory powers now exercised under trade law merely states: "The operation of prostitution establishments is sensitive from a criminal-policy point of view. To prevent criminal side effects such as human trafficking, forced prostitution and sexual exploitation, a preventive reliability check of the trader is sensible." (Bundestag printed matter 17/13706, p. 9)

But there can be no talk of a real increase in "criminal side effects" of prostitution that would justify such a tightening in the handling of prostitution. According to police crime statistics, so-called "associated crime" has been falling for years. In 2002, when the then Prostitution Act came into force, police statistics recorded 776 suspected victims of "exploitation of prostitution" (§ 180a StGB). Ten years later, in 2012, there were only 58 suspected victims! In 2002, police crime statistics recorded 793 suspected victims of the offence "pimping" (§ 181a StGB). In 2012 there were only 267 suspected victims of this offence. In 2002, 988 suspected victims of the offence "human trafficking" were counted. In 2012 there were only 642 suspected victims of "human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation". In 2011, only a single person was convicted as a perpetrator in a case of "exploitation of prostitutes", only 32 perpetrators in cases of "pimping" and 117 perpetrators in cases of "human trafficking".

The actual expansion shown by the still massive and extensive raids and routine checks in the prostitution trade, as well as the tightening of human trafficking legislation (most recently in 2005), contradicts the assumption that insufficient surveillance and overly lax criminal laws could be the cause of the decline in crime trends. If the legal handling of prostitution is now to be tightened by expanding control and surveillance despite this declining crime trend, then this is demonstrably based not on factually substantiated considerations but on the mere interest of opponents of prostitution combined with resistance to migration.

As can be seen here, the pretext of "prevention" can be used to skilfully undermine all civil rights, not only in prostitution. Indeed, it is a damning admission that the open and covert supporters of the new anti-prostitution law thereby expose about themselves.

(2)Unequal treatment under trade law through a "reliability check" combined with discriminatory special criminal provisions on prostitution

The inclusion of prostitution establishments in the catalogue of "trades subject to supervision" under § 38 paragraph 1 GewO results in "an automatic review of the trader's reliability immediately after the trade registration or re-registration is submitted." Unlike the large mass of "trades subject to notification" (under § 14 GewO), where such a "reliability check" is not provided for, this constitutes a blanket suspicion. Since 2002, the Federal-State Committee on Trade Law has recommended the status of "trade subject to notification" for prostitution businesses. What is now supposed to justify the blanket suspicion of a "trade requiring supervision" remains unclear. The classification as a trade subject to supervision not only corresponds to a factually unjustified blanket suspicion but also implies a solid legal unequal treatment of the prostitution trade compared to other branches of trade. For unlike other trades, the prostitution trade is additionally subject to extensive criminal and regulatory provisions specifically aimed at prostitution. These include:

(1) § 180a StGB Exploitation of prostitutes(2) § 181a StGB Pimping + §181b Supervision of conduct (relating to § 181a)(3) § 184e StGB Practising prohibited prostitution(4) § 184f StGB Prostitution endangering young people(5) § 232 StGB Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation(6) § 233a StGB Promotion of human trafficking (relating to § 232)(7) Art. 297 EGStGB Prohibition of prostitution / restricted-area ordinances(8) § 119 / § 120 OWiG Grossly offensive and harassing acts; Prohibited practice of prostitution; Advertising for prostitution

The inclusion of persons in corresponding criminal investigation proceedings will easily be used to deny persons in the prostitution trade the necessary reliability. Compared to other trades, this represents a crystal-clear case of unequal treatment. There can therefore be no talk of a trade-law equal status of prostitution establishments with other commercial enterprises.

(3)Quantitative and qualitative expansion of official control and supervisory powers through "information and inspection":

The classification as a "trade requiring supervision" under § 38 GewO goes hand in hand with the fact that "the competent authorities ... also have available to them, for the supervision of the operation, the information and inspection rights of § 29 GewO." The "competent authorities" or their "representatives" are authorised, without a judicial search warrant, to carry out "checks and inspections" at any time, without cause. It is to be expected that control practice against the prostitution trade will be expanded even further than has already been the case. Beyond the already customary large-scale raids in the prostitution trade, around 44,000 people are currently checked there in roughly 11,500 so-called "routine checks" per year. The expected expansion of this practice means a qualitative increase in the surveillance of the sexual behaviour of adult human beings. For the customers of sex workers, too, will be subjected to this surveillance practice.

The supervision of commercial enterprises to ensure compliance with the legal provisions applicable to them is already largely the responsibility, in Berlin, of the criminal police's trade field service (GAD). It is the declared goal of the BKA as well as the state interior ministers that "information and inspection" in the case of the prostitution trade - unlike other trades - be defined as a police task. This would further promote the trend towards simultaneous, raid-style police operations spanning several federal states.

The statement in the explanatory memorandum: "The operation of prostitution establishments is sensitive from a criminal-policy point of view" (p. 9), that this concerns the trade-police "prevention of criminal side effects such as human trafficking, forced prostitution and sexual exploitation" (printed matter 17/13706, p. 9), is more than just the usual stigmatisation of the prostitution trade as fundamentally afflicted with so-called "associated crime". These statements point in the direction of entrusting the police, unlike with other kinds of trade, with trade-law supervision. This is also indicated by the entanglement of the criminal-law problem of combating so-called "human trafficking" with questions of the trade-law regulation of prostitution. This constitutes an impermissible, surveillance-state-motivated misuse of trade law for purposes that have nothing to do with this area of law and are alien to it.

(4)Near-total control of the prostitution trade through an insufficiently clearly defined and overstretched concept of "prostitution establishment"

The explanatory memorandum states: "In particular, brothels, walk-up houses, brothel-like operations and other businesses relating to commercial sexual services are to be regarded as prostitution establishments, which are externally recognisable as prostitution establishments and are perceived as such. Purely private premises are thus not covered, because they are not accessible to a trade-regulation review. This also applies to renting a flat for the purpose of carrying out commercial prostitution." (printed matter 17/13706, p. 9)

With the subjective criterion that prostitution establishments are "businesses relating to sexual services" that are also "perceived as such," every flat brothel rented by two or three women that advertises online falls under the category subject to trade-law supervision, including "reliability check" (certificate of good conduct) and compliance with conditions. The character of "purely private premises" not subject to trade-law supervision is likely to apply only in the special case that a woman engages in prostitution in her own flat. As soon as she works together with other women who engage in prostitution in the flat but are not registered there and do not actually live there, the "purely private" character of the premises is likely to be quickly called into question. The expansion of supervision in the form of "information and inspection" is likely to tend to extend to all premises in which more than two women engage in prostitution. This was, incidentally, exactly the goal set by the Conference of Interior Ministers in 2010.

(5)Protecting society from prostitution with "conditions" and by means of undefined legal terms

On the basis of the new anti-prostitution law, an expansion of discriminatory special provisions against prostitution is carried out via trade-law regulation. Once again, society is supposed to be protected from "nuisances" caused by prostitution - so goes the stigmatising message. The draft law states: "Furthermore, the trade operation can be made subject to conditions for the protection of the general public, customers, prostitutes or residents of the business premises or neighbouring properties from dangers, significant disadvantages or significant nuisances." (p. 1)

Local trade authorities are given, with these objectives standing in the tradition and logic of classic restricted-area ordinances, a wide field of action with regard to the containment of prostitution. One can be sure that the "competent authorities" will exploit this scope granted to them with their usual imagination. The way would be clear for a nationwide condom obligation to protect customers or prostitutes - depending on interpretation.

(6)The way is clear for official registration and a constantly updated movement profile of sex workers

If prostitution establishments are classified as "trades requiring supervision" under § 38 paragraph 1 GewO, then paragraph 3 of this section also applies to them: "The state governments may, by statutory order, determine for the branches of trade named in paragraph 1 the manner in which traders are to keep their books and record data on individual business branches, business partners, customers and affected third parties."

This means that official registration of sex workers active in "prostitution establishments requiring supervision" is pre-programmed. Since such registration takes place in every establishment now classified as "requiring supervision," the evaluation of the resulting data yields a complete movement profile and thus the possibility of total surveillance of sex workers' professional activity.

The intensified surveillance therefore affects not only operators of prostitution establishments but is foreseeably going to hit sex workers as a whole, too.

(7)Even less legal certainty for sex workers

Due to the fact that "conditions" not further specified in content in the law can be defined by "competent authorities," as well as the fact that the state governments can determine by statutory order how traders are to keep their books and record data in future, sex workers, characterised by mobility, will have to adjust to a patchwork of provisions affecting them that vary from one federal state to another. While the control framework will be standardised nationwide in the course of the trade-law regulation, the legal provisions to which sex workers must submit will prove to be an unmanageable tangle of the most varied conditions and regulations. Legal certainty, to which sex workers in prostitution are also entitled, will fall by the wayside. A tried and tested means of deterrence, to make entry into prostitution more difficult.

Interim assessment

According to the text of the law, the classification of prostitution establishments as "trades requiring supervision" is supposed to result in an "improvement of the framework conditions for persons working in prostitution." (p. 1) That is sheer mockery!

That, of all things, more "supervision" is supposed to be the appropriate means of improving the framework conditions of an activity (there is, tellingly, no longer even any talk of improving 'working conditions'!) corresponds to the logic of an authoritarian surveillance state. This state behaves no differently towards the prostitution trade.

It would have suited the Federal Republic's society well to tackle the equal treatment of prostitution and other professions courageously, in cooperation with sex worker organisations. But this society and its political representatives are quite evidently neither willing nor able to initiate and ensure the necessary, obvious steps corresponding to the civic idea of equality:

1. Contra bonos mores: Explicit and definitive abolition of the verdict that prostitution is contrary to public morals in the Civil Code (BGB)!

2. Legal discrimination: Abolition of all discriminatory special legal provisions relating to prostitution!

3. Official discrimination: Cessation of all forms of discriminatory special official treatment of prostitution!

4. Freelance status: Recognition of the freelance nature of independently practised prostitution activity in trade, tax and building law! An association of freelance sex workers is not a trade-law-regulated prostitution establishment!

5. Trade-law notification requirement: Recognition of prostitution establishments as trades subject to notification" under § 14 of the Trade Regulation Act!

The path of a consistent legalisation of prostitution, which should have been taken after the depressing experiences with the 2002 Prostitution Act, unsuitable in many respects, is - to the delight of all opponents of prostitution - blocked for the time being by the anti-prostitution law now passed.

Cowardice is written on the foreheads of the political representatives of all established parties. Patriarchal bourgeois society and its political parties prove incapable of respecting the separation of sexuality and love practised in prostitution as a legitimate expression of sexual self-determination.

Instead, they lie to and deceive themselves and others with the supposed necessity of ever further-reaching legal tightenings against prostitution. Soon regulations to punish clients for negligently making use of the services of so-called "forced prostitutes" will be pulled out of the drawer: "A finished draft law is lying in the drawer." (MP Ute Granold (CDU/CSU), 243rd session of the German Bundestag, 17th electoral term, 6.6.2013, p. 30796) Whereby "coercion" is defined completely differently from how those affected themselves see it. For any consent of those affected to the circumstances of their migration or their taking up work is fundamentally regarded as "irrelevant."

The ideology of "human trafficking": the instrumentalisation of "victim protection" against prostitution

The adoption of the "Law to Combat Human Trafficking and Monitor Prostitution Establishments" takes the call to implement EU Directive 2011/36/EU of 5 April 2011 as an occasion and pretext for tightening German prostitution policy. That fits. For the directive itself is unmistakably an anti-prostitution as well as an anti-migration directive:

• With the expansion of the term "human trafficking," a comprehensive criminalisation of future poverty migration is anticipated.

• "Exploitation" in this context includes "at least the exploitation of the prostitution of others," so that the client of prostitution, who exploits the prostitution of others, tends to become a criminal exploiter.

• The "demand," which "fosters all forms of exploitation," is to be "counteracted." This is a barely veiled call, inspired by Swedish conditions, for state containment of prostitution.

• Finally, prosecution in cases of human trafficking is in future no longer to depend on a report or a complaint by the victim, and criminal proceedings are to be conducted even when a victim has withdrawn their statement. This consistently continues the line that the statement of the women declared to be victims is irrelevant.

Only to a public that no longer even takes note of the content of EU requirements, let alone examines them critically, can this policy be sold by interested parties as "victim protection."

For decades, the "victim protection" rhetoric cultivated by media and politicians has not served to protect actual victims of coercion and violence, for example through an unrestricted right of residence, but is instrumentalised to put legitimate rights of sex workers - denounced as promoting "human trafficking" - in their place.

In a manner completely disproportionate to the actual scale and the actual problem, "victim protection" and the fight against so-called "human trafficking" are always pushed to the forefront of public debate whenever, in the background, the rights of sex workers are once again to be curtailed and the system of discrimination against prostitution is to be modernised and expanded.

One should perhaps take note - even if it doesn't fit one's own worldview - that "according to the BKA's Federal Situation Report on Human Trafficking 2011 ... only 51 of the 640 police-registered victims of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation were third-country nationals who were staying in Germany illegally." (Federal Government's answer to the minor interpellation of MP Volker Beck and the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group, 22 Feb. 2013, p. 11)

Only for this absolutely marginal group of people would the demand for an unrestricted right of residence possibly have significance. But their (withheld) rights are pushed to the forefront and provoke outrage, while the simultaneous attack on the legal interests of 200,000 sex workers in prostitution is, with vested interest, pushed into the background and treated as a trifle. Who does that serve?

The great cross-party coalition against prostitution

Anyone who, beyond the current governing parties CDU/CSU and FDP, takes a look at the "opposition" parties will be robbed of any illusion that politicians with a sense for the rights of sex workers are at work here. The Social Democrats organised in the SPD would - if only they could - drive it even harder than the CDU/FDP. Not least the SPD's draft law on prostitution establishments in Bremen proves this.

One must, for once, agree with the otherwise always unspeakably arguing opponent of prostitution MP Hans-Peter Uhl (CDU/CSU) when he attests that the SPD has "a mania for regulation without end." "No one would credit a CSU politician with something like that," said Uhl, referring to the Bremen SPD. We certainly see it differently. But it is accurate: the SPD has long been "at the forefront of the regulation movement." (243rd session of the German Bundestag, 17th electoral term, 6.6.2013, p. 30800)

Particularly shameful, however, is the role of the party 'Alliance 90/The Greens.' For years, it has - always very vaguely - spoken of a "trade-law regulation," of a "trade-law recognition" of prostitution. Many specialist counselling centres that support prostitutes have parroted this. Now Alliance 90/The Greens is letting the cat out of the bag: "Trade-law recognition" means, for them, the classification of prostitution establishments as "trades requiring supervision" under § 38 GewO with all the discriminatory consequences that follow from it!

The Green parliamentary group submitted, dated 21 June 2013, an amendment (committee printed matter 17(6)285) to the CDU/CSU/FDP legislative motion, which limits itself to granting victims of human trafficking, under very restrictively worded conditions, a right of residence "independent of possible involvement in criminal proceedings."

Core point of the matter: the amendment is only to be added as "Article 4" to the previous three articles of the CDU/FDP draft. In other words: Alliance 90/The Greens is thereby agreeing without objection to the entire anti-prostitution law of the federal government, as long as it is merely supplemented with a further victim-protection clause.

The party Alliance 90/The Greens could not have expressed more clearly that the elementary rights of sex workers mean to them nothing more than a mere tactical bargaining chip in the deal with political competitors.

Whoever - like Alliance 90/The Greens - signals their agreement to

• stigmatising prostitution fundamentally as a form of trade afflicted with "associated crime";

• placing the prostitution trade under blanket suspicion and subjecting it to intensified official-police control and surveillance;

• accepting, by tolerating the traditional and discriminatory special criminal provisions against prostitution, an unequal treatment under trade law of the operators of prostitution establishments compared to other trades;

• further expanding the legal uncertainty of sex workers in prostitution through conditions undefined in content and state-specific statutory orders;

• accepting practices of registering sex workers, their forced outing and the disclosure of their professional movement profile,

has forfeited every right to claim "protection of prostitutes" as a legitimation for their political action.

For this is nothing other than a trade-law codification of the discrimination of a profession that is systematically denied legal equality. With Green agreement, sex workers in prostitution are to continue leading a humiliating existence as second-class citizens deprived of rights.

It belongs to the "end of hypocrisy" that the representatives of Alliance 90/The Greens are thereby making clear which side they stand on.

Through the additional motions introduced by Alliance 90/The Greens into the Bundestag debate on 27 June 2013, on the "obligation to obtain permission for prostitution establishments" as well as on "punishing clients," this party has, at the expense of sex workers, populistically fuelled the competition for the toughest anti-prostitution regulations and tried, at the last minute, to overtake the CDU/CSU/FDP regulations on the right. It is to be expected that the law passed by the CDU/CSU and FDP will be amended in this sense either via the Bundesrat or via a future black-green federal government. For the obligation to obtain permission is an original demand of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), and the punishment of clients is an original demand of the CDU/CSU. The losers would in any case be the women in prostitution.

Outlook

It is not hard to predict: even with the current anti-prostitution law, no more victims of "human trafficking" will be identified. But prostitution establishments will be forced to their knees and closed down, prostitution will be contained.

Not only the current federal government, but all the parties that have dirtied their hands in the participation in and debate on the now-adopted anti-prostitution law, will sooner or later turn sex workers into their opponents.

One more strong argument for an independent, party-politically unaffiliated and combative organisation of sex workers in this country.

Doña Carmen e.V. will continue to support the process of organising sex workers in order to bring down the adopted anti-prostitution law along with all other legal provisions discriminating against prostitution.

Source: https://www.donacarmen.de/erklarung-von-dona-carmen-e-v-aus-anlass-der-verabschiedung-des-gesetzes-zur-bekampfung-des-menschenhandels-und-uberwachung-von-prostitutionsstatten/#more-408

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Open letter to the members of the German Bundestag

Published on 30 May 2016 by Doña Carmen

Dear Sir or Madam,

On 2 June 2016, the first reading of the so-called "Prostitutes' Protection Act" will take place in the German Bundestag.

As an organisation that has been dealing with women in prostitution, including many migrant sex workers, for nearly two decades, we take this opportunity to address you directly.

As an elected member of the Bundestag, you have the opportunity to express your displeasure with the draft law submitted by the federal government and to refuse it your approval. We would like to encourage you to do so. We would like to remind you of your responsibility - well aware that sex workers are a social minority whose fate need not necessarily interest you personally.

But since the treatment of minorities - as you will surely know - has always been an unfailing gauge of the actual validity of freedom rights, it should not be a matter of indifference to you what the "Prostitutes' Protection Act" planned by the Grand Coalition does to those affected.

The "Draft of a Law for the Regulation of the Prostitution Trade and for the Protection of Persons Working in Prostitution" (printed matter 18/8556 of 25.05.2016), submitted by the CDU/CSU/SPD federal government, questionably assumes as a guiding principle a sex worker who acts self-determinedly only in exceptional cases. Sex work is, in its majority, regarded as determined by others. Against this background, the creation of countless occasions for control, as the draft law provides for, is supposed to appear as "protection" of those affected and as a guarantee of self-determined action.

However, the basic assumption of a largely other-determined sex worker is not supported by any social-scientific, empirically based study. It is therefore a convenient assumption with the aim of legitimising a policy that places an entire professional group under exceptional law. And the federal government's present draft law makes ample use of this.

The "Prostitutes' Protection Act", soon to be voted on,

• - involves a 50-fold legal unequal treatment of prostitution compared to other independently practised trades (cf. https://www.donacarmen.de/wp-content/uploads/Rechtliche-Ungleichbehandlung-des-Prostitutionsgewerbes.pdf);

• - is based on calculated breach of law for the purpose of containing prostitution. As an example, we would point out here only that the planned registration requirement for sex workers violates Art. 8 para. 4 of EU Directive 95/46/EC, which prohibits EU member states from processing personal data concerning, among other things, sex life. Furthermore, the obligation to appear in person in the course of the planned registration or extension of registration for sex work violates Art. 8 para. 1 of the European Services Directive (electronic handling of the taking-up or exercise of a service activity).

• - imposes on sex workers almost 40 obligations, compliance with which turns the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of occupation into a caricature and will push those affected into illegality (cf. https://www.donacarmen.de/wp-content/uploads/Pflichten-von-SexarbeiterInnen-und-BordellbetreiberInnen.pdf);

• - establishes with each of these obligations corresponding occasions for control and sanction, excellently suited to subject those affected to official harassment as needed; on top of that come numerous operator obligations, since any flat used by as few as two sex workers is classified as an operator-run commercial enterprise;

• - subjects sex workers henceforth at every step to surveillance exercised by the state and by brothel operators;

• - paves the way for a culture of suspicion founded on denunciation, since flats can be entered at any time without cause by police and regulatory authorities for the purpose of checking suspected prostitution activity.

On a national scale, this makes police-supervised offering of sexual services the norm. As in the days of the German Empire!

Is this treatment of the sexuality of adult, responsible citizens what you, as a member of the German Bundestag, envisage as a vision of a future society?

The present draft law of the Grand Coalition paves the way for compulsory health counselling, for compulsory official registration of the women affected as last happened in 1939 under the Nazis, for forced outing of those affected, for a humiliating, mandatory condom use intruding into the intimate life of adult human beings. When has there ever been such a diverse, state-created form of coercion in prostitution?

Rest assured: All organisations of sex workers and all organisations that can point to experience in dealing with sex workers firmly reject the draft law submitted. For it is written on its forehead: it is nothing more than an anti-prostitution law. You will not find a single sex worker who can find anything positive in this repressive piece of legislation.

So do not, as a member of the Bundestag, believe everything you are told about the "Prostitutes' Protection Act"! Even when party colleagues speak of "protecting prostitutes": distrust it! For it is nothing other than a false pretence. The present draft law is by no means intended to protect prostitutes from coercion and violence; rather, it is intended to protect society from prostitution. With it, morality once again becomes the guiding principle of law and legislation.

How can you reconcile this relapse into times long thought past with your basic political convictions and your conscience? How is a law that aims to declare the way of life of certain sections of the population to be generally binding supposed to fit a pluralistically constituted society?

Prostitution "not infrequently forms the milieu for significant crimes (human trafficking, drug trafficking, weapons and counterfeit money offences, etc.), which are committed with a high degree of organisation. From an investigative point of view, it is an aggravating factor that this area is increasingly dominated by foreign perpetrator groups (language and cultural barriers). The state may no longer close its eyes to this area. It is inhumane if we act as though everything is fine because everything is regulated in theory."

Does it not give you pause that this cited passage from the draft party programme of the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) is interchangeable across the board and can be found in almost identical wording in all corresponding statements by CDU/CSU, by SPD and by the GREENS?

Here as there, it is concealed that relevant offences in this area have long been declining. The "Police Crime Statistics 2015," published just a few days ago, confirms an impressive decline in all key figures for so-called "red-light offences." For "human trafficking" (§ 232 StGB), the official statistics document a halving of all relevant key figures (cases, suspected victims, suspects) for the period 2000-2015. The ratio "suspects to suspected victims" has for decades been just above 1:1, so that talk here of "organised crime" or "foreign perpetrator groups" (AfD) provides a deliberately distorted picture of reality.

The situation in the EU is even clearer. According to the most recent EUROSTAT report of 19 April 2016, there are, relative to the more than 500 million inhabitants of the EU, 7,923 suspected (not even judicially confirmed) victims each in the last two years. A clear decline compared to previous years! With a rate of between 0.3 and 0.2 convictions per 100,000 inhabitants, so-called "human trafficking" proves to be one of the rarest types of crime - quite contrary to the shrill anti-human-trafficking hysteria of official EU policy as well as of abolitionist hate preachers who believe the whole world must be cured according to their own way of life.

Despite all these indisputable facts, the parliamentary group leaders of the governing parties CDU/CSU and SPD advocate a "licensing requirement for the prostitution trade" and for checks at any time, independent of suspicion and without cause. They have thus adopted a fixed idea of the BKA from the year 1993! They have allowed themselves, with the blessing of the churches, to be wrapped around the finger by senior police authorities and interior ministries and have had a textbook police law dictated into their pen. What a damning admission!

Even committees of the Bundesrat and the German Association of Women Lawyers (djb) hold their breath and attest, among other things, that § 11 ProstSchG ("Orders against prostitutes"), in its current form, is incompatible with the constitution. The same is likely to apply to other sections of the law as well. For § 11 ProstSchG stands only as a representative example of the thoroughly repressive spirit that characterises the present draft law as a whole.

When it comes to prostitution, politicians of all parties positively rave, enraptured, about the ideal of self-determination. Well then! If this principle is really close to your heart as a member of the Bundestag, do not hesitate for a moment and set a good example! It is said that you generally have to bow to party discipline and must subordinate your personal convictions to it. Have the courage now and refuse to be determined by others through the in every respect inappropriate stipulations of your parliamentary group leadership! Show that you really mean it when it comes to self-determination!

Even if you owe your personal standing, your political well-being and your material provisions as a member of the Bundestag to a large extent to subordinating yourself to your party's group discipline: resist the temptation of being determined by others on this point! Decide autonomously! Live out what is preached to sex workers! Vote 'No' when it comes to subjecting 200,000 women in this country to a repressive control law!

Migrant sex workers in particular are readily said to be credulous, to fall for all kinds of deception and to blindly follow the temptations of easy money. This, it is said, must be countered.

As a member of the Bundestag, set a good example here too! Do not credulously trust the all-too-transparent media staging of Germany as the "brothel of Europe." Distrust the horror scenarios of a mass flooding of the prostitution trade by externally controlled poverty migrants! Grant foreign women too the capacity for rational decisions! Do not fall for the legend that women in prostitution are nothing but "helpless victims," incapable of helping themselves in cases of coercion.

So vote 'No' when you are pressured, under false pretences, to approve a law that amounts, on balance, to a social ostracism of prostitution! Or can you, as a member of the Bundestag, reconcile it with your conscience that sex workers in this country are forced by the thousand, by law, into illegality and thereby, de facto, declared outlaws?

And please consider: the ostracism of prostitution is, as experience shows, only the entry point into a renewed repressive treatment of sexuality beyond prostitution too. Do you find that desirable? Is that your ideal of a future, free society?

Doña Carmen e.V. declared, on the occasion of the entry into force of the red-green Prostitution Act in 2002, that it was a "showcase law" that did not solve the real problems of the prostitution trade. We have been proven right by our assessment at the time. But of course nobody wanted to hear that. Today, fourteen years later, our assessment of the present draft for a "Prostitutes' Protection Act" turns out to be no less disastrous. But there is one crucial difference: those affected will not put up with the police law on prostitution now on the table! Please bear that in mind!

We appeal to you, as a member of the Bundestag, to take seriously the criticism voiced not only by us but also by many other social organisations.

Therefore:

• - Give sex workers rights, instead of giving authorities and police ever more control rights!

• - Stand together with those affected for the legal equal treatment of prostitution with other trades!

• - Help to ensure that discriminatory exceptional law and the special criminal law still in force against prostitution finally become a thing of the past!

In short: refuse your approval, entirely, to the so-called "Prostitutes' Protection Act"!

Yours sincerely

Juanita HenningSpokesperson, Doña Carmen e.V.

Source: https://www.donacarmen.de/offener-brief-an-die-abgeordneten-des-deutschen-bundestags/

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Prostitutes' Protection Act bears the handwriting of the police

Published on 17 March 2018 by Doña Carmen e.V.

Dear colleagues,dear friends,

Our organisation - the association Doña Carmen e.V. - stands up for the social and political rights of women in prostitution.

There is hardly likely to be another economic sector in this country that is monitored by the police to such a high degree as the prostitution trade. I say this because we have been documenting the police surveillance of this trade in the form of raids since the year 2000. The result:

Over the past 18 years, in the course of 351 large-scale raids in 1,058 municipalities, more than 9,500 brothels and flats were searched. 77,000 deployed investigators checked around 55,000 people on site, generally sex workers. That is quite considerable.

One should know that in every 9th raid, special police forces are deployed: BGS or federal police, mobile task forces (MEK), special task forces (SEK), and in individual cases even the special unit GSG 9. This shows that red-light raids are always also training exercises for paramilitary units.

The raids in the prostitution trade are only the famous "tip of the iceberg." Constant 'regular' routine police checks are not even taken into account here. Through them, according to our calculations, around 40,000 women are checked per year.

Revelations from Wikileaks have shown that the American government has itself informed in detail by the Frankfurt police chief about the extent and scale of prostitution surveillance. This emerged from a cable report published by Wikileaks in 2011.

Doña Carmen took this as an occasion to ask the then police chief, Dr Achim Thiel, for information about what these practices of networking between German and American police authorities regarding prostitution surveillance were all about.

Mr Thiel wrote at the time to Doña Carmen:

"As far as I recall, it is true that I did have a conversation at the time in question with members of US police authorities, in which the experiences of the German and the US American police in combating red-light crime were discussed. This was a customary exchange of experience for the maintenance of international police cooperation." (Letter from Dr Thiel to Doña Carmen, 22.11.2011)

We consider both the oversized, repressive police surveillance of prostitution and the "customary exchange of experience" with the US American police to be a single imposition. But all of that is normality.

It seems that those in power do not like it at all when their actions are documented. We had to learn that last year. The mere fact that we keep, on the Doña Carmen website, a statistics register of brothel raids visible to everyone was, for example, a thorn in the side of the Frankfurt tax office and a welcome pretext for the attempt to strip us of our charitable status.

Thus the tax authority wrote in August 2017 to the Hessian Finance Court (I quote):

"The register of raids kept since the year 2000 and the regular protests against police raids ... do not indicate that (Doña Carmen e.V.) has any understanding for the tasks of the security authorities ..."

(End quote)

A critical stance towards the police apparently already counts, for the tax office, as sufficient grounds to strip an association of its charitable status! That is remarkable!

We have not let ourselves be impressed by this authority's attacks and continue to document the police surveillance of sex workers. But we oppose not only the repressive control activities of the police on the ground, but also the structural influence of the police on political decisions.

As you may have heard, since July 2017 a so-called "Prostitutes' Protection Act" has been regulating the treatment of sex work in prostitution in this country.

Central points of the law are (1) compulsory medical counselling, (2) compulsory registration of women, (3) an associated forced outing of those affected, (4) the introduction of a "whore's pass" that sex workers must carry with them at all times, and (5) far-reaching rights of entry for regulatory authorities into prostitution establishments.

To enter prostitution establishments, one will in future no longer need a search warrant. The police will be able to walk in at any time.

One must know: a prostitution establishment already exists when just two women engage in prostitution in a flat. The fundamental right to the inviolability of the home under Art. 13 of the Basic Law is thus suspended not only for sex workers. For the right of entry also applies when there is merely a suspicion that a woman might possibly be engaging in prostitution in her flat.

The core element of the Prostitutes' Protection Act, the "licensing requirement for prostitution establishments," also enables comprehensive control of the women working there. Supervisory authorities can, if needed, create an almost seamless movement profile of women in prostitution.

However you look at it: the new Prostitutes' Protection Act is a textbook police law!

Thus individual elements of the law were drafted directly by the police. The role of politicians was limited to hanging a parliamentary cloak over this law as an executing organ of the police. With respect, dear colleagues: these are conditions that would do credit to any police state!

We have not the slightest problem in substantiating our accusation in detail and can name names:

(1) The "licensing requirement for the prostitution trade" is a concept of the BKA from the year 1993. Ulrich Sieber, then professor of criminal law at the University of Würzburg, developed it in the BKA-funded commissioned study "Logistics of Organised Crime." The declared aim was the introduction of new state powers of intervention, such as decoupling police investigations from the requirement of a concrete suspicion of an offence.

(2) The registration requirement for sex workers was an idea of the Hannover Police Directorate, which in 1999 submitted a complete legislative initiative for regulating prostitution. Chief Criminal Councillor Schnelker presented it in 2001 at a hearing in the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs.

(3) The health counselling and the special treatment of women under 21 are slightly modified proposals by the Augsburg criminal investigator Helmut Sporer from the year 2006.

(4) The far-reaching rights of entry for the police in the area of flat-based prostitution, anchored in the Prostitutes' Protection Act, go back to proposals championed by Detlef Ubben of the Hamburg LKA. The "Hamburger Abendblatt" reported in 2011, with reference to Mr Ubben, on a corresponding legislative initiative developed largely in Hamburg.

All of this makes clear: the Prostitutes' Protection Act bears the handwriting of the police from A to Z!

So it is of course no surprise that fundamental rights for sex workers are thereby suspended: the fundamental right to freedom of occupation, the fundamental right to informational self-determination, the fundamental right to sexual self-determination, as well as the fundamental right to the inviolability of the home.

Doña Carmen has filed a constitutional complaint against this, which will be heard by the Federal Constitutional Court still this year.

One thing is clear: against police violence, against disenfranchisement and discrimination, one should defend oneself - legally, politically and with actions like this one today!

Many thanks for your attention!

Source: https://www.donacarmen.de/prostituiertenschutzgesetz-traegt-handschrift-der-polizei/#more-1992

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