[REPORT] Human Rights Watch “Swept Away: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China” “扫除” 中国性工作者遭受侵害

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Sex workers in China face many challenges making their voices heard. Because of the legal and social environment of widespread discrimination and stigma, sex workers are also particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses. Asia Catalyst is currently working with a partner organization in China to document sex workers’ experiences in “Custody and Education” (C&E) detention facilities, where sex workers and their clients can be held for up to two years without trial. We welcome the important new report from Human Rights Watch, Swept Away: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China, which not only provides a rare opportunity to hear the voices of sex workers themselves, but also highlights arbitrary detention as one of them many abuses they face. HRW rightly notes that although the Chinese government announced that it plans to “stop using” the Re-education Through Labor (RTL) administrative detention system at some point in 2013, it has remained silent with respect to C&E and forced drug detoxification centers.

The full report in English in PDF format is available here: “Swept Away: Abuses Against Sex Workers in China.”

Summary and Recommendations in Simplified Chinese (中文) in PDF format is available here:

下载中文概述及建议

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[PROFILE] Xiao Bao: Empowering LGBT in China

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Zhao Zheng, known to his friends and coworkers as Xiao Bao, has been working in HIV and STI prevention since 2004. In 2008 he was conferred the title of Youth Ambassador for HIV Prevention by the Tianjin HIV and STI Prevention Coordinating Committee. At 26, he is the youngest of the activists Asia Catalyst is supporting to go to the International AIDS Conference this July. 

Currently the program officer and coordinator for Tianjin Deep Blue Working Group (天津深蓝工作组), Xiao Bao is responsible for, among other things, program management, training, planning, research and evaluation. In 2008, Xiao Bao was appointed a Community Liaison to the China Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM) Health Forum. In collaboration with the Institute of Sexuality and Sociology at Renmin University, he completed research to assess the size of the MSM population in Tianjin, and initiated the MSM Population Ethnic Research Survey in 2010. 
In the run-up to this year’s International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2012, Xiao Bao spoke to Asia Catalyst about his own work.

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[COMMENTARY] What We Talk About When We Talk About Outreach

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By Mike Frick 

Many of our partners in China engage in “outreach” to marginalized communities such as sex workers, drug users, or men who have sex with men, that are at increased risk of contracting HIV. We hear a lot about “outreach,” but what do these activities actually look like in practice? China program director Gisa Hartmann and I experienced outreach first-hand when we accompanied Lanlan, a member of Asia Catalyst’s NGO Leadership Cohort, on an afternoon with female sex workers in Tianjin.

Lanlan is the founder and executive director of Tianjin’s Xin’ai Home, a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the health and rights of female sex workers in Tianjin. Over the course of four hours, Lan Lan showed us two different outreach environments: a bathhouse with about twenty-five sex workers and a street with dozens of hair salons and massage parlors, each staffed by two or three women.

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[NEWS] CHINA’S CHONGQING CITY REFORMS LAW ON SEX WORK/ 重庆市对卖淫嫖娼者不再进行劳动教养

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New changes to Chongqing City’s local laws now eliminate reeducation through labor as a form of punishment for sex workers and their clients. China’s reeducation through labor system allows police to sentence people without trial for minor crimes. While far from decriminalizing sex work Professor Yang Weidong of the National School of Administration notes that with this important step ‘the legitimacy of reeducation through labor has been questioned.’ Read the article here (in Chinese.)  

法制网报道，重庆市修改地方法规，删除对卖淫嫖娼者实行劳动教养的规定。详细的中文报道，请查看这里。

[COMMENTARY] Sex Work is Work, Plenary Speech by Kaythi Win

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By Kthi Win

Plenery speech by Kaythi Win, Chairperson of Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, at Association of Women in Development Forum forum in Istanbul on April 21,  2012. See the exciting video here.

Hello everybody,

I am Kthi Win from Myanmar and I am a sex worker. I manage a national organization for female, male & transgender sex workers in Burma & I am also the chairperson of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers.  Until now, organizing anything in Myanmar has been very difficult.  And people ask, “how did you set up a national program for sex workers?”  And my answer to them is “Our work is illegal.  Every night we manage to earn money without getting arrested by the police.  We used to work and organize together, so we use this knowledge in order to work out how we can set up the National Network without making the government angry”.

This topic is about transforming economic power.  I want to say to you, that when a woman makes the decision to sell sex, she has already made the decision to empower herself economically.  What we do in organizing sex workers, is we build on the power that the sex worker has already taken for herself – the decision to not be poor.

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