PRESS RELEASE – For Distribution

BUYING SEX IS NOT A SPORT

 

 

            It is estimated that 3 million football fans – mostly men – will attend the events in the 12 cities hosting the World Cup Games, and that 40,000 women will be “imported” into Germany from Central and Eastern Europe to “sexually service” the men.

 

            Germany legalized pimping and the sex industry in 2002. Now, the industry is predicting that the legal red light districts will be too small for the thousands of sport/sex tourists in attendance.  Thus, the German sex industry has erected a massive prostitution complex for the “booming business” expected during the games.  A 3,000 meter mega brothel has been built next to the main World Cup venue in Berlin to accommodate 650 male clients.  Wooden “sex huts” called “performance boxes” that look like toilets have been built in fenced-in areas the size of a football field, with condoms, showers and parking for the buyers and a special focus on protecting their “anonymity.”

 

            Some groups are protesting only the “forced prostitution” and trafficking in women expected as a result of the Games. But there is a contradiction in claiming to fight against trafficking while at the same time ignoring or endorsing the legalized prostitution economy that encourages the physical and psychological exploitation of women and the marketing of women’s bodies as commodities to be bought and sold.

 

            The CATW petition, available at http://catwepetition.ouvaton.org/php/index.php, calls upon the 32 countries participating in the World Cup Games to oppose Germany’s promotion of prostitution and publicly dissociate their teams from the prostitution industry; urges the FIFA Committee and its President, J.S. Blatter, to oppose the link between football and the sex trade; and calls upon the German government and its chancellor, Angela Merkel, to stop this traffic in women for prostitution and discourage the male demand that fosters prostitution.

 

 

 

* The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) is a non-governmental organization with Category II Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It has regional networks in Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia, Europe, Latin America and Caribbean and North America. CATW’s mission is to promote women's human rights and work internationally to combat sexual exploitation in all its forms, especially prostitution and trafficking in women and children.  See http://www.catwinternational.org/