Charlie Smith

No-go zones rile sex-trade activist Jamie Lee Hamilton

Vancouver's best-known sex-trade activist, Jamie Lee Hamilton, is promising to create an international controversy if the city creates no-go zones for sex-trade workers. No-go zones were mentioned in a new community-based report on the sex trade, which was unveiled at the Vancouver Public Library's Central Branch on June 4.

"I, for one, will make this an international issue when they're talking no-go zones," Hamilton told the Georgia Straight. "We already had a no-go zone with the 1984 West End injunction."

Hamilton said that in the early 1980s, she was street soliciting on Davie Street and felt she was part of a "cultural community" of sex workers. But a group of West End residents, including future city councillor Gordon Price, complained about the impact of the sex trade on the neighbourhood. The attorney general of the day, Brian Smith, obtained a court injunction, moving the sex trade south of Seymour Street.

Hamilton said she ended up working in industrial areas of Mount Pleasant. Others moved to the Downtown Eastside. "The message was sent out to the predators that it was open season," Hamilton said, drawing a link between the 1984 injunction and the waves upon waves of sex-trade workers who later went missing on the Downtown Eastside.

The sex trade is still a dangerous trade

• Sex workers are 120 times more likely than any other demographic group to be beaten, raped, murdered, kidnapped, or mutilated.
• Between 1994 and 2003, at least 79 sex-trade workers were murdered in Canada while engaging in prostitution.
• At least one third of the women who went missing on the Downtown Eastside were of aboriginal descent.
• Street prostitution accounts for approximately 15 to 20 percent of all prostitution in Canada.
• Approximately 20 percent of those involved in street prostitution are males, transvestites, or transgendered people.
• 10 to 15 percent of men in North America buy sexual services.
• 15 to 20 percent of male clients say they are looking for affection and seeking touch and friendly contact.
• The United Nations estimates that 700,000 people per year are victims of the global human-trafficking industry.

Source: The Challenge of Change: A Study of Canada's Criminal Prostitution Laws by the Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws