www.praguepost.cz PRAGUE POST Thursday, September 11, 2003 Dinah A. Spritzer Staff Writer Flesh point Government's moves to legalize prostitution raise concerns [photo caption] Former prostitute Lea says the government simply wants to bring in revenue. Behind her are brothel workers Adriana and Vanessa. The dark-eyed, light-skinned woman in sporty pants and sneakers looks like any university student you might see in Old Town. Except that Maja, as she is known on the streets, turns an average of five tricks a night. "Three oral and two intercourse is quite enough," she said while waiting for a checkup at Rozkos bez rizika (Pleasure Without Risk), a not-for-profit organization that provides medical care for prostitutes. Maja ran away from Kosice in eastern Slovakia three years ago when she was 18 and pregnant because, she said, her family had become abusive. She ended up in Prague and turned to prostitution to make a living. She works Perlova street, competing mostly with Bulgarian and Ukrainian women for clients. "I am different because I do not have a pimp. I work for myself," she said, "but that was very tough in the beginning and I was constantly threatened." Maja said she works an average of four nights a week, taking home 10,000 to 15,000 Kc ($333 to $500). "Those other girls from the East, they don't make any money because they are forced to give it to their pimps or they get beat up," said Maja, who would not provide her real name. As she tried to restrain her boisterous 2-year-old daughter from tripping over her own feet, Maja described the most dangerous moment of her career. "I was taken by a client in a car to a brothel somewhere near Cheb, and it was in the middle of nowhere. He said he was going to sell me to the owner, take away my passport and force me to sign a note of debt. "The other girls told me the police would come and have coffee with the owner, knowing what he was doing but looking the other way in return for their cut." Maja escaped from the brothel the next morning by climbing out a window when the owner was sleeping. She said such episodes are not unusual for street prostitutes. "The violence, the health problems, the nasty police -- all of this would be different if we could just practice our trade like anyone else." Many in the high ranks of national and local government agree. Aiming to curb criminality tied to the sex trade, the Interior Ministry and Prague city government are drafting bills that would legalize prostitution by 2004. "Feminists do not like the idea of legal prostitution because they want to see women as victims, but legalization is a way of having women be their own bosses," said Jitka Gjuricova, director of the Interior Ministry's crime-prevention department. The bill, drafted by Gjuricova, is currently under government review. Along with legalization, it would require prostitutes to secure licenses, with harsh penalties for those who sell sex without registering with the government. Gjuricova said legalization will reduce organized crime and deter illegal immigration from Eastern countries. It would be coupled with a tougher line on human trafficking, including stepped-up prosecution of traffickers and greater protection for victims who testify against them. "The main reason to regulate prostitution is to separate out the willing prostitutes from the unwilling, prevent organized crime and protect public order," she said. However, skeptics maintain that mandatory licensing will drive many women underground and may make many prostitutes' lives more dangerous. "The penalization of unregistered prostitutes, who are likely to be foreign and working illegally, will mean they are less likely to seek out doctors and social workers," said Hana Malinova, director of Pleasure Without Risk. "This could lead to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases." Klara Skrivankova of La Strada, an international advocacy group for trafficked women, said registration would also compromise women who only occassionally sell sex. "Women who register must have their data protected because many of them work part time and do not want their side profession revealed," she said. The Interior Ministry bill would tax prostitutes, require health checks and bar brothel owners or pimps from taking the women's proceeds. Prostitutes would have to pay for their medical insurance. Such a move would make the Czech Republic one of three countries in Europe, along with the Netherlands and Switzerland, with legal prostitution. In Germany and Austria, prostitution is regulated, although not officially legal. The Wild East Prostitution was banned under communism, but many post-communist countries, including Czechoslovakia, neglected to create new laws that would address the issue after 1989. Neither legal nor illegal, the sex trade flourished in Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic. The country was close enough to the West to attract a steady flow of moneyed clients. "Regional governors and mayors from the border towns near Germany and Austria are particularly eager to have their street prostitutes registered because there is so much business going on there," Gjuricova said. Because of its position at the crossroads of Europe, the Czech Republic also attracted traffickers -- people who sold Czechs and, especially, women from poorer countries such as Ukraine and Moldova into sexual slavery abroad, where they could fetch more money. According to the Interior Ministry, the traffickers now use the Czech Republic mostly as a transit point. The UN and the United States have commended the Czech Republic for its efforts to combat trafficking. The Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania are the only three former Eastern bloc countries that receive the highest-possible rating, Tier 1, in the annual trafficking assessment report put out by the U.S. government. The Interior Ministry works with not-for-profit organizations to help trafficked women but often has trouble with prosecution because its legal means to provide assistance to witnesses, such as financial incentives and residency, are not yet developed, according to Western diplomats. La Strada assists about 100 women a year in the Czech Republic, and more than half are from outside the country, according to Skrivankova, a coordinator at the organization's Prague office. But she said the numbers seriously understate the problem -- most women who are trafficked do not seek help because they are afraid of retaliation from traffickers or pimps. Gjuricova offers an additional explanation of why relatively few prostitutes seek outside help: "The majority of foreign women in brothels outside of Prague were not physically coerced. They are just so desperate for money that when the police try to help them, the girls don't want to go home." Jitka Gjuricova of the Interior Ministry said legalization would allow a crackdown on human trafficking. Skrivankova said one obstacle for trafficked women is the attitude of street-level police. "The organized-crime unit is excellent," she said, "but for a woman who runs out of a brothel in her underwear asking for help, the average cop thinks, 'She is just a whore.'" She said the country was dragging its feet on creating an action plan that would provide increased protection for trafficking victims. "The pace is too slow. The Ministry of the Interior has been working on this since 1999. We need something we can offer the women right now that would help them." Skrivankova said she would favor legalization of prostitution under certain circumstances. "The main aim of legalization should not be the preservation of public order or the generation of revenue," she said. "The goal should be to protect women and create safe work conditions." Legalization could make life harder for women from countries such as Bulgaria and Ukraine, Skrivankova said, noting that under the Interior Ministry plan only prostitutes from European Union countries will be allowed to work in the Czech Republic. "Traffickers will exploit these illegal women and threaten them, telling them they will be deported if they don't surrender all of their money," she said. But Gjuricova says the ministry's goal is to keep such women from coming to the country at all. SEX FOR SALE ï Money made by legal residents at high-class brothels: 4,000 Kc to 5,000 Kc ($133-$167) a night ï Potential annual tax revenue from brothels: 6.5 billion Kc ï Number of reported cases of trafficking in 2002: 15 ï Number of people convicted for trafficking in 2002: 20 ï Number of people convicted who were given suspended sentences: 15 Source: Interior Ministry 850 - Number of brothels in Czech Republic 5 - Average number of prostitutes per brothel 3,000 to 6,000 - Estimated number of street prostitutes "We don't want them here," she said. "In the countries where prostitution is regulated, trafficking goes down." Upscale, part time K5 looks more like a luxury hotel than a brothel. Within its themed rooms -- jungle, outer space, Egyptian -- guests fulfill their erotic desires in the fantasy world of their choice. The K5 ladies, as they like to be called, are among the best-paid in the city, charging 3,900 Kc for one hour, including VAT. The brothel on Korunni in Prague 2-Vinohrady is inspected regularly by public-health officials. Technically speaking, the women who work there do not belong to the house; they rent the rooms to provide their services, keeping 60 percent of their fees. Most of them are part-timers. Their number includes university students, professors, hotel receptionists, even police academy graduates. The manager requires health certificates that show that the women working at K5 are not HIV-positive and he sends them to his personal doctor to ensure the certificates' validity. He said that because so many prostitutes in the Czech Republic work part time, registration will force them to work underground because they will not want family and friends to know about their nocturnal activities. "Business will migrate to private flats, and the police will have an even bigger problem than they do now," said the manager, who asked that his name be withheld. Lea, a former prostitute and now the club's receptionist, dismissed legalization as simply a way for the state to make up for lost revenue. "They don't care about the girls -- they care about the money," said the 28-year-old. An economist with a German university degree, Lea worked off and on as a prostitute for 10 years. Legalization, she said, "will only force women who do not want to be identified as prostitutes into hiding. For Ukrainian ladies, nothing will change. They just will be more terrified." But Maja says regulation and mandatory health checks are important for her and other career street prostitutes. "I want to know that the women on the streets are clean and they can prove it," she said. "Now, if a man is with a woman with AIDS or syphilis, he could come to me next."