WUNRN
Canada - Décembre 2007
No Legalized Brothels for the Vancouver, Canada, 2010 Winter Olympics
Aboriginal Women's Action Network Statement
Aboriginal
Women’s Action Network on Prostitution
As
Aboriginal women on occupied Coast Salish Territory, we, the Aboriginal Women’s
Action Network (AWAN) implore you to pay attention to the voices of
Aboriginal women and women’s groups who are speaking out in the interest of our
sisters, our daughters, our friends and all women whose voices have not been
heard in the recent media discussion on prostitution and legalized brothels for
the 2010 Olympics.
We,
the Aboriginal Womenâs Action Network, speak especially in the interests
of the most vulnerable women - street prostitutes, of which
a significant number are young Aboriginal women and girls. We have a
long, multi-generational history of colonization, marginalization, and
displacement from our Homelands, and rampant abuses that has forced many of our
sisters into prostitution. Aboriginal women are often
either forced into prostitution, trafficked into prostitution or are facing
that possibility. Given that the average age at which girls enter prostitution
is fourteen, the majority with a history of unspeakable abuses, we are also
speaking out for the Aboriginal children who are targeted by johns and pimps.
Aboriginal girls are hunted down and prostituted, and the perpetrators go
uncharged with child sexual assault and child rape. These predators, pervasive
in our society, roam with impunity in our streets and take advantage of those
Aboriginal children with the least protection. While we are speaking out for
the women in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, we include women
from First Nations Reserves, and other Aboriginal communities, most
of whom have few resources and limited choices. We include them because AWAN
members also originate from those communities, and AWAN members interact
regularly with Native women from these communities.
The
Aboriginal Women’s Action Network opposes the legalization of prostitution, and
any state regulation of prostitution that entrenches Aboriginal women and
children in the so-called "sex trade." We hold that legalizing
prostitution in Vancouver will not make it safer for those prostituted, but
will merely increase their numbers. Contrary to current media coverage of the
issue, the available evidence suggests that it would in fact be harmful, would
expand prostitution and would promote trafficking, and would only serve to make
prostitution safer and more profitable for the men who exploit and harm
prostituted women and children. Although many well-meaning people think that
decriminalization simply means protecting prostituted women from arrest, it
also refers, dangerously, to the decriminalization of johns and pimps. In this
way prostitution is normalized, johns multiply, and pimps and traffickers
become legitimated entrepreneurs. Say "No" to this lack of concern
for marginalized women and children, who in this industry are expected to serve
simply as objects of consumption ! The Aboriginal Women’s Action Network
opposes the legalization of brothels for the 2010 Olympics. We refuse to be
commodities in the so-called "sex industry" or offer up our sisters
and daughters to be used as disposable objects for sex tourists.
A
harm-reduction model that claims to help prostituted women by moving them indoors
to legal brothels, not only would not reduce the harm to them, but would
disguise the real issues. There is no evidence that indoor prostitution is
safer for the women involved. Rather, it is just as violent and traumatic.
Prostitution is inherently violent, merely an extension of the violence that
most prostituted women experience as children. We should aim not merely to
reduce this harm, as if it is a necessary evil and/or inescapable, but strive
to eliminate it altogether. Those promoting prostitution rarely address class,
race, or ethnicity as factors that make women even more vulnerable. A treatise
can be written about Aboriginal womenâs vulnerability based on race,
socio-economic status and gender but suffice it to say that we are very over-represented
in street-level prostitution. There may even be a class bias behind the belief
that street prostitution is far worse than indoor forms. It is not the street
per se or the laws for that matter, which are the source of the problem, but
prostitution itself which depends on a sub-class of women or a degraded caste
to be exploited. A major factor contributing to the absence of attention given
to the women who have gone missing women in Vancouver is the lack of police
response, and the insidious societal belief that these women were not worthy of
protection, a message that is explicitly conveyed to the johns, giving them the
go-ahead to act toward these women with impunity. If we want to protect the
most vulnerable women, we could start by decriminalizing prostituted women, not
the men who harm them. Although it is not mentioned in the local news, the
Swedish model of dealing with prostitution provides an example we should
seriously consider. It criminalizes only the buying of sex, not the selling,
targeting the customer, pimp, procurer, and trafficker, rather than the
prostituted woman, and provides an array of social services to aid women to
leave prostitution. Given that the vast majority of prostituted women wish to
leave prostitution, we should focus on finding ways to help them to do that
rather than entrenching them further into prostitution by legalizing and
institutionalizing it. Here in Vancouver, if we are to help those most in need,
young Aboriginal women, it would help to think more long-term, to focus on
healing and prevention. Let’s not get tricked into a supposed fix which is not
even a band-aid, but only deepens the wounds.
AWAN
demands that Aboriginal women have the opportunity to raise our families within
our Traditional values of having a respected position for women and children in
our societies. The single-most effective way of achieving that goal is
empowering and resourcing Aboriginal womenâs groups, such as AWAN, so that we
can organize, engage with other sectors of society and speak with our own
voices. We have a great deal of certainty that organized Aboriginal womenâs
voices would be calling for "Exiting" programs and services, support
for Aboriginal women and children, and an end to forced prostitution. Let
Vancouver enter into the 2010 Olympics without wearing the black-eye of
decriminalized prostitution and legalized brothels that drive Aboriginal women
further down the Human Rights ladder of Canadian and Vancouver society.
For
further information, please contact AWAN spokesperson, Laura Holland at (604)
767-5564.
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