An article about sex work by DELFI, the biggest internet news portal in Lithuania. According to Coalition's opinion, the article was objective and comprehensive enough and rose a lot of good questions. Read original in Lithuanian below.

June, 2010 – Though it was Saturday, journalists met with SWAN representatives in Lithuania to talk about sex work. In hope to establish a closer and more productive relationship and to open a dialogue on the representation of sex workers in media, Coalition I Can Live invited journalists from various printed media for a discussion.

Sex workers’ organizations across Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia used the opportunity of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers to advocate SW’s rights. Below is a summary of the activities carried out be the organizations.

The meeting brought together 32 participants from 16 countries with the aim to exchange experience, share problems and find solutions, renew and strengthen the partnership ties and get to know new network members better.

The Ohrid network meeting was preceded by an activists’ meeting. 18 sex worker activists turned the meeting room into an art workshop and a cafeteria to discuss issues and personal experience around sex work in their countries.

Dear all:

To mark December 17, the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers, the Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia is releasing its new report, Arrest the Violence: Human Rights Violations Against Sex Workers in 11 Countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The report is based on interviews with more than 200 male, female and transgender sex workers between 2007 and 2009 and chillingly documents widespread violence and discrimination against them, particularly by state actors.

According to Rebecca Schleifer of Human Rights Watch’s Health and Human Rights Division:

Arrest the Violence is the first piece of research done under the leadership of sex workers to document human rights violations they face across Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Sex workers throughout the region report that they face verbal and physical abuse, including beatings, kidnapping, and sexual violence, by police and private citizens. Sex workers also report that police confiscated condoms as “evidence” of sex work, and subjected them to mandatory HIV testing.
These are not isolated incidents. The physical, sexual, and verbal violations of sex workers’ rights are part of a pattern of abuse by police and in the community that is documented throughout the region.
It is my sincere hope that this report will serve as a catalyst to awaken the broader human rights community to the importance of documenting and denouncing human rights abuses against sex workers, and working with sex workers to end these abuses.

To access the report, please follow the links below.
Questions or comments may be directed to SWAN@TASZ.HU.

Sincerely,
Aliya Rakhmetova
Coordinator Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN)

---------

May 4, 2009, Vilnius --- the analytical TV show „Balsas.lt“ which is broadcasted through TV3, one of the most popular commercial television channels in Lithuania, featured the sex work situation in Lithuania. Sex workers, police officers and MPs were interviewed.

I Can Live Coalition, SWAN member from Lithuania, organized on December 17 a consultative meeting that focused on human rights of sex workers and legal and health services. The event attracted media attention.

Lietuvos Rytas Daily, Lithuania
Excerpts, provided and translated by the coalition I Can Live, SWAN member from Lithuania
Vilnius, March 7, 2007 -- Discussions about legalization of prostitution are not unusual in Lithuania. But such discussions usually die out as quickly as they start. It is a legal occupation and has become a common business in Germany, Holland, Austria. But most of us can not even imagine how such an activity could be legalized. Certainly, society has more myths about the legalization of the oldest profession in the world, than about legislation of cannabis…

In July this year, the Coalition I Can Live, the SWAN Network member from Lithuania, initiated establishment of a national contact network of organizations concerned about sex work issues in this Baltic country. The establishment of the network has attracted attention of the leading national media and initiated public discussion about the rights of sex workers.