The training, organised with the support of UNFPA and RCNF, was facilitated by ICRSE representatives Luca Stevenson and Anastacia Ryan and by SWAN Programme Officer Roxana Vasi.
The topics of the training were community empowerment, sex work and the laws, violence, sex worker-led community services, condom programming, community-led clinical services, programme management, and organisational capacity building.
In 8 days the police raided the church and evicted the sex workers and allies. This event inspired the start of the worldwide sex workers’ movement, and celebration of June 2 as International Sex Workers’ Day.
Last year, the movement for sex worker’s rights received the support of important organisations, UNAIDS and Amnesty International, who are calling for decriminalisation of sex work.
Datsik has a huge criminal background. He is an ex-fighter and boxer. Datsik has been imprisoned several times. He is a former member of the ultranationalist Slavic Union, which has similar political ideologies as Nazi Germany. The Slavic Union was banned in Russia because of their promotion of hatred.
At the meeting, more than 40 representatives of the sex workers community have identified goals, objectives, and key actions for the next five years. The meeting was attended by representatives from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Togliatti, Perm, Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Krasnoyarsk, Orsk, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
At the meeting the participants discussed the problems that sex workers are facing in these regions, barriers to prevention programs and ways to overcome them.
The meeting participants prepared reports on the following topics:
Silver Rose has members in more than 40 cities in Russia including: Kaliningrad, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Ufa, Kazan, Nalchik, Ekaterinburg.
The main activities of Silver Rose include:
1.Improving the quality of life of sex workers;
2.Formation of a tolerant attitude towards sex workers in society;
3.Improving access to health services;
4.Legal protection of sex workers;
5.Personal growth and peer-to-peer mutual support and advice on how to navigate the legal system;
The legislation set aside 4,8 million Euros to offer ‘help’ for those who want to leave sex work. Foreign sex workers will be granted a temporary 6 month residence permit if they exit sex work and find another job. Sex workers claim those measures are not aimed to help them: “although prostitution is seen as a form of violence against women, only repenting victims deserve support.
If arrested, both clients and sex workers are punished with up to 60 days in prison or fines up to 150 000 RSD (approximately 1300 EUR). The unemployment rate in Serbia is 19.3 percent and the average net salary is 43 925 RSD (approximately 353 EUR). For some people, sex work is the only via option to provide for themselves and their families.
Previously selling sex was illegal in Serbia but buying sex was not.
On a November night in 2008, the police carried out a police action called “Suppression of Street Prostitution” in which 32 individuals, 23 of whom were sex workers, were deprived of their liberty. The police unlawfully detained the sex workers for more than 20 hours in inhumane and degrading conditions, while the other detainees were released just a couple of hours after their arrest. The police mocked the sex workers, and said things such as “now dance, now stand like sheep.
Sex workers in eastern Europe and central Asia resist their social exclusion and repression in many ways, but the political climate has so far prevented broad-based organising.