The usual rubbish that comes out in the press before a big international sporting event is back, according to the New Internatonalist: journalists throughout the 'free' press are already salivating about the '40,000 (or some such large number) forced prostitutes' who will be compelled to work during the London Olympics. The same kind of unresearched bumf came out before the World Cup in South Africa and various other sporting events, going back years. It's not even specualtion; there is nothing to support the articles but guesswork and other, equally underresearched articles from other, equally idiotic journalists.The worrying aspect of the articles before the South Africa World Cup is that the country has some of the worst figures for HIV prevalence in the world. Therefore, half a million or a million visitors (depending on which source you believe) faced a very real risk of being infected with HIV, hepatitis or other blood-borne diseases if they happened to go for a tattoo, dental treatment, medical treatment or any number of other procedures. UNAIDS, despite being aware that such risks exist, choose not to inform Africans, preferring just to warn their own employees. When it comes to Africans, their response is that 80-90% of transmission is from heterosexual contact. But in the run-up to the World Cup, they didn't even warn visitors to the country.As the New Internationalist points out, the figure is purely imaginary, probably inflated by those who feel all sex work is also sex trafficking. One of the problems with this is that there is little way of telling where the real trafficking is taking place, and therefore where to concentrate efforts to reduce it. But why traffic thousands of people for a very short event, anyway? 40,000 sex workers would barely get enough business from the Olympics attendees who happen to be male, sexually active and remotely interested in having sex with someone who has been forced into the business against their will (as opposed to those who make a choice to be sex workers, for whatever reason).There are people being trafficked, but if police concentrate all their efforts on commercial sex work, they will have difficulty identifying those who are doing it against their will. And if they think trafficked sex workers will suddenly be easy to find during the olympics, this is not going to be their 'lucky break'. But I'm sure the police know that, even if journalists don't (I'd like to say tabloid journalists but I don't think it is confined to them). Apparently there is increased police activity, with the predictable excesses that go with such measures, but let's hope they quickly realize that they have better things to do.Luckily, unlike in South Africa, there is little risk of being infected with HIV or anything else through medical or cosmetic exposure. At least, people won't face any higher a risk than patients currently do in UK health facilities. But sudden spikes in media and political interest in such issues doesn't help anyone, the women who are mistreated by the police, women and girls who happen to be trafficked, or anyone. The various illegal practices that surround sex work, which probably arise from the fact that it hasn't yet been decriminalized, are likely to continue, unaffected by the waxing and waning of these mostly trumped-up moral crusades.[For more about non-sexual HIV risks, such as through unsafe healthcare practices, see the Don't Get Stuck With HIV site.] read more..
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