If the Poppy Project is concerned about prostitutes being criminalised, where is it when the law raids, detains and deports women (Letters, 26 May); when mothers working collectively face closure, brothel-keeping charges, imprisonment and separation from their children; or when women driven out of premises risk rape or murder on the street?
If the Poppy Project is concerned about prostitutes being criminalised, where is it when the law raids, detains and deports women (Letters, 26 May); when mothers working collectively face closure, brothel-keeping charges, imprisonment and separation from their children; or when women driven out of premises risk rape or murder on the street?
While anti-rape organisations struggle to survive, the Poppy Project has received £9.5m from the Office for Criminal Justice Reform since 2003. Its research implying that most sex workers had been trafficked was condemned as flawed by 27 academics. The legal definition of trafficking for prostitution, unlike all other trafficking, fails to mention coercion. So foreign accents alone can inflate figures, which are then used to justify laws criminalising both clients and sex workers. High figures lead to large funding, not to women’s safety.
Cari Mitchell
English Collective of Prostitutes
The Poppy Project claims it is feminist. My feminist organisation in Turkey was approached by a group of sex workers after the police smashed streetlights where they worked, making them vulnerable to attack. Should we have refused to help on the basis that their job legitimises men’s violence against women? No, we considered that sex workers knew best how to protect themselves, and supported them. Even if you are against prostitution, you should distinguish yourself from the Home Office – though this is harder if, like the Poppy Project, you are funded by it.
Filiz Gul
London
Sources:
- The Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/03/research.women
- academic response – http://www.drpetra.co.uk/resources/BigBrothelAcademicSummResponseSept08.pdf
- UK home office report on tackling the demand for prostitution – http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/tackling-demand?view=Binary
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/10/women.socialexclusion
- link to the letters – http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jun/01/prostitution-trafficking-poppy-project