World P4P News

In comments that were quickly denied by the Philippine government, U.S. ambassador Harry Thomas claims that 40% of male visitors to the country go there for sex.

Thomas told a forum of Philippine judges and officials:

We know that 40% of foreign men who come to the Philippines, including from the U.S., come for sexual tourism. That is not something I'm proud of. That's not something you should be proud of.

Thomas said the sex trade is popular in karaoke bars and clubs along Roxas Boulevard, a main thoroughfare in Manila that also houses the U.S. embassy. He added:

Corruption allows these notorious establishments to continue to operate. Local officials will look the other way or accept favors. These officials are doubly guilty.

Tourism assistant secretary Domingo Enario disputed the claims and said: We are not sure where his statistics are coming from.

According to AFP, the allegations come as the country is embarked on a campaign to increase tourism to the country from an all-time high of 3.52 million visitors last year to a target goal of 6 million by 2016. Whether a crackdown on the sex trade will make that target number more or less achievable remains to be seen.

Update: Politician gets in his two-penneth

29th September 2011. From journal.com.ph

Law enforcers should dismantle large scale sex tour syndicates to effectively purge the rampant sex trade and prostitution in the country, claimed Senator Aquilino Pimentel III.

It is the sex tour organizers and operators who are responsible for the upsurge of prostitution in the country, Pimentel claimed.  Sex tourism refers to a program organized by travel and tourism-related establishments and individuals which consists of tourism packages or activities, utilizing and offering escort and sexual services as enticement for tourists.

Pimentel appealed to law enforcement agencies to intensify their anti-sex trafficking campaign by focusing on Internet sites that openly promote sex tourism in the Philippines.

Are there ANY such large scale operations organising sex tours? From my experience, people organise their trips via totally mainstream travel and accommodation services that have nothing to do with sex. Then when they arrive, they independently start off their quest for fun via the easy to find nightlife areas. No need whatsoever of a guide or pre-booking or anything like that.

Update: Apology

29th September 2011. See  article from  bbc.co.uk

The US ambassador to the Philippines, Harry Thomas, has apologised for saying that 40% of male tourists visit the country for sex.

His remark during a conference last month led to a local outcry, with officials unhappy at their country being portrayed as a sex haven.

The US embassy confirmed Thomas had now expressed regret for his comments.

In a text message to a Philippine minister, he said he should not have used the statistic without proof.

The Ukrainian women's movement FEMEN has staged a topless protest against what they say are UEFA's plans to turn economically weak Ukraine into a destination for sex tourists from around the globe.

Ukraine is to co-host Euro 2012 together with Poland next summer, but FEMEN see nothing good in a major football tournament coming to their country.

Four of the movement's activists shouted slogans like Ukraine is a brothel and Euro 2012 without prostitution .

A statement on FEMEN's blog said something a little but too complicated for the translator:

FEMEN consistently criticizes UEFA for its policies of corrupting the fans and artificially cultivating fanaticism, aggression, moral and mental degradation in them. The European plodder, who does not go beyond the 'football-beer-bang' formula, is the portrait of a 'superhuman', according to the football bureaucracy. For the 'high' right to host Euro 2012, the Ukrainians are obliged to give away all of their little wealth to be plundered by Platini's charges, with the most famous of them being the women.

The movement demands that European football's governing body initiate an awareness campaign against sex-tourism and financing of the sex industry among fans, and also want customers of prostitutes to face criminal charges.

Update: And again at the opening of a new sports stadium

10th October 2011. See  article from  dailymail.co.uk

Topless women were arrested at the opening ceremony for the Euro 2012 stadium in Kiev after they invaded the pitch as part of a feminist protest. One woman had to be carried off the pitch by a steward, wearing only a pair of black leggings with two flowers painted over her breasts.

The Ukrainian activists, Femen, who have a history of getting their kit off to promote their causes, believe the tournament will increase sex tourism in their country. Bare with me: A steward drags a topless activist off the pitch at the Euro 2012 opening ceremony in Kiev

The demonstrators said in a statement: Femen demands that UEFA initiate an explanatory campaign for football fans about the impermissibility of sex tourism and funding the sex industry, and the Ukrainian authorities criminalise the visiting of prostitutes.

A Czech prostitution bill has been debated at a conference in Prague.

University attendees concurred that the bill does not take into account the rights of those who offer sexual services. The law should not only address the needs of the state and municipalities but also of those of the prostitutes, namely protect them against violence, remove the stigma of being unacceptable from them and give them more rights in relation to their clients, the experts said.

The participants in the conference were generally appreciative that the bill setting the rules for prostitution in the Czech Republic has been allowed to develop as issues have been identified.

However Blanka Hancilova, analyst at the University of Vienna, said the latest version of the Czech bill on prostitution plans to introduce repressive measure against prostitutes. She said she believes this would not lead to a long-term solution of the problem. Hancilova said municipalities should seek ways of reintegration of prostitutes into society instead of forcing them out of their centres.

According to the latest proposal worked out by Prague authorities, prostitution should be a legal profession, persons offering sexual services would get registered and receive certificates as well as pay taxes and undergo regular medical examinations and face fines if they violated the rules.

Barbara Havelkova, from the Law Faculty at Oxford University, said that the introduction of compulsory medical check-ups has not improved the situation either as clients and pimps pressurise prostitutes with medical certificates to have sex without condoms far more often.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal and is a Union Territory of India.

A 'shock' report by journalist Zubair Ahmed has highlighted the islands' potential for holiday fun.

How times have changed at the once staid Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Now Ahmed writes:

Hordes of girls from Diglipur, Havelock and even Little Andaman come to the city for prostitution. Everyone accepts it.

Worse, sexual favors are now being widely used by smart workers who exploit the weakness of their bosses for money, appointment, transfer, relatives' appointment, promotions and also to get even with rivals in service.

The malaise has reached a stage where it has started hurting the simple, innocent and hardworking women employees who wish to remain faithful to their husbands and family values. It is being discussed in drawing rooms and in coffee houses; though in hushed tones.

These are a few incidents sufficient to gauge the depth of the abyss the Island society has plunged into. The rot in the society is visible to the naked eye.

Nothing prevents two consenting adults from having sex in government guest houses and bathrooms; it is not a cognisable offence either. But when sex of senior government officers moves up from their groins and occupies the space in their brains, it assumes maniac proportion and become a matter for public concern.

Without accountability and fear of God, we cannot expect a major change.

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo by Rhacel Parrenas offers a scholarly, sociological portrait of Filipina hostesses and waitresses in Tokyo's red-light districts that is clear and compelling enough for the lay reader. To write this book, the author herself worked as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub.

In 2004, the U.S. State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90%, from more than 80,000 in 2004 to just over 8,000 today.

To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parrenas counters that this drastic decline which has stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoods.

Parrenas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo's red-light district, serving drinks, singing karaoke, and entertaining her customers, including members of the yakuza, the Japanese crime syndicate. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parrenas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. But this is not to say that the hostesses were not vulnerable in other ways.

Illicit Flirtations challenges our understandings of human trafficking and calls into question the U.S. policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problems--including laws that push dependence on migrant brokers, guest worker policies that bind migrants to an employer, marriage laws that limit the integration of migrants, and measures that criminalize undocumented migrants--many women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less.

This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked.

Eva Buschi, a professor at the School of Social Work of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, interviewed managers of sex establishments for a study entitled Violence in the Sex Business and concluded that lack of regulation was a major problem for both sex workers and the establishments themselves.

In other businesses workers get contracts, in which the tasks to be performed, the price and how long they should take are clearly laid down. In the sex business today this is mostly not the case, she told swissinfo.ch.

One problem is that managers of sex establishments are afraid of falling foul of the law forbidding the promotion of prostitution, she explained.

But the study shows that violence is a daily reality in the business. It occurs among customers, between the managers and the workers, and among the workers themselves. However, the managers of the businesses often downplay the issue. They tend to see their main problem as social stigmatisation.

Given that the legal sex business generates a turnover put at 3.5 billion Swiss Francs ($4.4 billion) per year, Buschi says it should be approached pragmatically, ensuring that workers are given the best possible conditions.

If sex work is professionalised, it will help destigmatise the work, and be easier to draw a divide between legal and illegal sex providers, the study says. Both owners and clients will find it harder to put pressure on the workers, and that in turn will give them extra protection and make it easier to confront problems. The greater the pressure on sex workers, the greater the danger that they will, for example, accept a drunken client or agree to perform their services without a condom.

The authorities in Nidau in canton Bern have already introduced conditions for granting permits to would-be sex establishments. The move was regarded as a possible model for the rest of the country.

The managers of the establishments have to guarantee that the women are declared as sex workers and not as tourists, and that they are in the country legally. They must give the women information leaflets in their own languages about their rights and duties -- including that they must declare their earnings to the tax authorities. Nor must the managers charge excessive prices for rooms or slap on unreasonable extra charges. In addition, the local advisory centre must be given unlimited access to the sex workers.

The police can make unannounced visits to check that the rules are being followed.

The German city of Bonn has introduced parking meters for prostitutes in an attempt to tax the world's oldest profession.

Prostitutes working the streets of the old West German capital now have to buy tickets from converted machines that once dispensed parking ticket.

A one night permit to work will cost a prostitute back £ 5.30, irrespective of the number of clients they have.

The machines also tell users the times of day when a ticket is necessary.

Monika Frombgen, a spokeswoman for Bonn city council, said the ticket machines would bring street prostitutes into line with their peers who are taxed when working registered brothels. She said: This is an act of tax fairness . Prostitutes in fixed establishments such as brothels and sauna clubs already pay tax.

Inspectors will prowl the streets and any prostitute caught without a ticket will receive a warning for a first offence, but after that faces the possibility of a fine or a ban from working.

Sex workers are hoping to cash in on overseas and interstate visitors to Perth during October's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Perth madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy said sex workers would be out in force while more than 50 heads of state and their entourages are in town. She said she would double her workforce and expected to double her profits.

The eyes are lighting up. The dimples are out again, Ms Kenworthy said with a laugh: I have the potential to increase my turnover 80 to 100 per cent during CHOGM.

The event runs from October 28-30 and will attract at least 1000 media representatives from around the world.

Ms Kenworthy said the city's roaring sex trade would not be hidden from the CHOGM dignitaries because it was very likely that Western Australia would then be in the grip of a parliamentary debate about legalising prostitution. Attorney-General Christian Porter said Perth had nothing to be ashamed of for debating prostitution during CHOGM.

Ms Kenworthy said she planned to spruce up her Langtrees establishment in Perth and employ at least 20 more sex workers. She would also expand escort services and charge $4000 a night for her best girl . It won't be that sort of clientele where they just need the physical sex. It will be more the mental sex because of the age of people," she said somewhat cheekily.

Arguably the sex tourism capital of the world, Thailand is now deliberately using the family tourism label to shed the sex destination tag, a Thai diplomat said here Friday.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of an event organised in Panaji to promote Thailand as a tourism destination, Tomwit Jarnson, the Thai consul general in Mumbai, said family tourism would eventually edge Thailand away from the slur of sex tourism in the years to come: We are trying to project Thailand as a family tourism destination. We are slowly changing the perception of Thailand to the rest of the world .

We are slowly developing facilities in Thailand which will attract family tourism. We have a lot of Indian families who travel to Thailand, Jarnson said.

He further said that the Thailand tourism authorities were trying to project Phuket - which, along with Bangkok and Pattaya, is regarded as the prime sex tourism area in Thailand - as a family tourism destination.

Prostitution is common place in the tourism districts of Thailand, which nearly 14 million tourists visit annually, a large chunk of these are single males or male groups of tourists seeking sex or sex-oriented fun.

The mayor of a small Italian town has suggested the legalisation of prostitution in an attempt to address economic crisis.

Altopascio Mayor Maurizio Marchetti has proposed the creation of red light districts throughout Italy to combat budgeting shortfalls, ANSA reported.

Today this is a totally illegal industry where you see employment of between 70,000 and 100,000 people, according to estimates. I can already imagine the criticism, but I am asking everyone -- is it moral for a person to work illegally earning 10,000 euros a month and feeding a criminal underworld, while there are people who are working honestly and cannot get to the end of the month?

In Iraqi Kurdistan, one female MP is fighting a lonely battle: legalised prostitution.

Haza Sulaiman's efforts to regulate and control the trade in northern Iraq's three Kurdish provinces have so far run into widespread opposition from rival lawmakers and religious groups, but Sulaiman remains undeterred.

The women's rights activist and current head of the Kurdish parliament's women's rights committee said:

We need a special law for the region -- Iraqi law is not consistent with the reality on the ground here,

I have many concerns over the associated issues if we do not organise it under a new law -- those who practice prostitution must be subject to periodic tests to monitor their health and prevent the spread of disease.

At present, Kurdistan is subject to a 1988 law that applies to all of Iraq and bars prostitution entirely, but reserves punishment only for sex workers, not their clients.

At present, an encounter with a teenage prostitute typically costs $150, with prices decreasing as the girls' ages rise. A several-hour non-sexual encounter where a prostitute dances in front of a client costs $200, with sex costing extra.

Sulaiman tried to submit a law legalising and regulating prostitution in 2010, but parliament was inquorate when she proposed that it be scheduled for discussion, after the powerful legal committee did not back it.

A Zimbabwe MP is sponsoring a Private Members' Bill to legalise prostitution, claiming it would stop the physical abuse of sex workers and allow for effective strategies to curb the spread of HIV in the oldest profession .

Bulawayo East MP Thabitha Khumalo says she is trying to drum up support among legislators for the controversial law reforms before tabling the Bill.

SADC has set a 2015 target to reduce new HIV infections by 50%. There is a popular belief in Zimbabwe that prostitutes are the biggest drivers of the HIV spread, and if that's the case then we can't meet our targets without engaging the sex workers.

Khumalo says legitimising the work of pleasure engineers , as she called the prostitutes, would allow for a more open interaction with HIV groups and the police to curb both the spread of the disease and stop physical abuse of women: We need to find out how they live; what hazards to their personal security they face and any barriers they face in accessing treatment for various health issues including HIV. At the moment they face discrimination, denial of access to drugs and many just go underground and that's dangerous.

A Czech lawmaker has proposed to raise budget income by introducing a tax on prostitution.

This move may increase annual budget income by 10 billion koruna [about $570 million], the radio quoted Jiri Rusnok of the Public Affairs party as saying.

Other parties in the ruling coalition, the Civic Democratic Party and TOP09, are so far reluctant to support the idea, saying that the state shouldn't be turned into a pimp.

Though prostitution is not outlawed in the Czech Republic, pimping and organizing brothels is prohibited.

The Swiss have now built drive-in sex boxes in which prostitutes can entertain punters in private.

The lay-bys were built by council staff after householders whose homes overlook Zurich's red-light district lodged thousands of complaints.

Police spokesman Reto Casanova said: We can't get rid of prostitution, so we have to control it.

The Yuan, Taiwan's legislature, has decided to hold public hearings during its next session on a controversial amendment that would allow the establishment of legal red-light areas in cities and counties in Taiwan, according to lawmakers.

At issue is a draft amendment to the Social Order and Maintenance Act that would legalize prostitution in specially designated areas.

The Executive Yuan adopted the amended bill, which rules that those involved in the sex trade, including prostitutes and those who seek out their services, outside special designated red light areas would be liable for a fine of up to NT$30,000 (US$1,040).

The current law prohibits sex work as harmful to social norms of behavior and punishes only sex workers, mainly women, who are subject to a maximum of three days detention or a fine of up to NT$30,000. However, those who solicit the services of a prostitute cannot be prosecuted. Earlier this year, the Council of Grand Justices of the Constitutional Court ruled that existing regulations concerning prostitution violate the Constitution, and therefore ruled that they should be annulled, a ruling that takes effect on 1st November 2011.

However, the proposal has received only a lukewarm response from local governments, with surveys conducted by local media suggesting almost all of the 22 cities and counties around Taiwan are not interested in establishing legal red light areas, because of concerns about the supposed impact on social order.

In a move which could lead to the formal regulation of prostitution in India, the Supreme Court is mulling laying down conditions conducive for sex workers to carry on their profession with dignity.

A bench presided over by Justice Markandey Katju, which had earlier talked about rehabilitation of sex workers, has sought suggestions on formulating conditions which would enable those who wished to continue working as sex workers to do so with dignity. Holding that the right to live with dignity was a constitutional right, the bench constituted a panel comprising senior advocates and NGOs to look into the problems faced by sex workers and give suggestions to protect their fundamental rights.

To ensure effective implementation of rehabilitation and other schemes, the court directed the Centre and state governments to undertake surveys to ascertain how many sex workers wanted rehabilitation and submit reports to the panel constituted by it. It is estimated that there are over 3 million female commercial sex workers in India.

Though prostitution per se is not illegal, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 makes certain acts relating to prostitution an offence. The absence of proper provisions for regulating the profession, however, often paves the way for harassment of sex workers by the police.

The court had decided to enforce the right of sex workers after it came across a case of a brutal murder of a prostitute in Kolkata in September 1999.

While upholding a life term for the convict who had killed the prostitute by brutally banging her head against the floor and the wall several times, the court had on February 14 directed the Centre and state governments to prepare schemes for providing vocational training to sex workers and sexually abused women. It had further sought compliance reports from the Centre and state governments.

Society must have sympathy towards the sex workers and must not look down upon them. They are also entitled to a life of dignity in view of Article 21 of the Constitution, Justice Katju had observed.

The bench said the plight of women had also been depicted in a poem by Urdu poet Sahil Ludhianvi. The poem had taken the form of a song - Jineh naaz hai Hind par, woh kahan hain' - in the famous Hindi film Pyaasa, Justice Katju pointed out.

Impressionist Oliver Callan told a court that he had never heard of Waterford's Maryland House when he wrote a sketch for RTE's Nob Nation which is at the centre of a libel action.

Callan said he believed Maryland was a district of Waterford that was well-known for prostitution but he had never heard it was a guesthouse or hotel in the city. Had he known of its existence he would not have made such a reference.

He also apologised for any offence he may have caused as he believed comedy should not set out to offend.

He was giving evidence in an action against RTE by Vincent O'Toole, owner of the Maryland House, who claims he was defamed in the Nob Nation sketch on 2FM's Gerry Ryan Show in August 2008.

The court has heard O'Toole previously successfully sued the Sunday World over a similar claim and was awarded EUR50,000 in damages.

A sketch in Nob Nation included the line: The Maryland is a byword in Waterford for prostitution although the original establishment from whence the term is derived has ceased business.

O'Toole alleges that the words suggested he was a brothel-keeper, that his home was the haunt of undesirables, and that he was or is involved in racketeering.

Update: Easy Money

16th July 2011. See  article from  thejournal.ie

A Waterford guesthouse owner has been awarded EUR70,000 by the High Court after being innocently defamed by a comedian in a radio sketch.

Vincent O'Toole, owner of the Maryland House, claimed he was defamed by comedian Oliver Callan in a Nob Nation sketch that was broadcast on 2FM's Gerry Ryan Show in 2008. In the sketch, Callan wrote: The Maryland is a byword in Waterford for prostitution although the original establishment from whence the terms is derived has ceased business.

Senior counsel for O'Toole, John Gordon, asked the jury to put themselves in his 84-year-old client's shoes; asking how they would feel if, in their declining years, their home and guesthouse was described as a brothel, reports Newstalk.

Callan told the court that when he wrote the sketch, he thought the Maryland was a district of Waterford, and had not known that it was, in fact, a guesthouse in the city. He said he was very sorry for the distress the incident had caused O'Toole, reports the Irish Times.

A new report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says Internet access should be a fundamental human right, like freedom of expression.

The study also argues that Internet blocking and content filtering mandates and technologies are, in most cases, cannot be reconciled with the free flow of information and freedom of expression, both of which are basic commitments made by the 56 members of the OSCE.

Everyone should have a right to participate in the information society and states have a responsibility to ensure citizens access to the Internet is guaranteed,' the report reads.

The study, authored by Istabul Bilgi University's Yaman Akdeniz and commissions by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic' examines the level of Internet content regulation in the OSCE region and evaluations how member states' laws embody their OSCE commitments and international standards.

Legislation in many countries does not recognize that freedom of expression and freedom of the media equally apply to Internet as a modern means of exercising these rights, said Representative Mijatovic', in a statement. In some of our states, 'extremism , terrorist propaganda, harmful content, and hate speech are vaguely defined and may be widely interpreted to ban speech types that Internet users may not deem illegal.'

The report also noted that many countries permit the complete suspension of Internet access and services during a declared state of emergency, war, or in response to other security threats.

Foreign Office to discuss UK policy on freedom of expression on the internet

Based on article from computing.co.uk

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will host a multidisciplinary meeting next week exploring the UK's policy towards freedom of expression on the internet.

The first meeting, which will be led by Jeremy Browne, minister for state at the FCO, takes place on 20 July. It will include representatives from human rights campaigners.

No doubt the meeting will discuss how Britain's three strikes and your cut off from the internet stacks up with the call for a human right to internet access.

Argentina has banned prostitution adverts in newspapers.

President Cristina Fernandez said women needed protection from violence and sex trafficking. The ban specifically applies to any advertising text or images that, in the Government's words, abuse, defame, discriminate, dishonour, humiliate or threaten the dignity of women.

Her decree has predictably drawn nutter praise from women's groups and the US ambassador.

But some opponents fear her Government will use it to punish opposition media this election year by removing an independent source of revenue.

The decree also creates a monitoring office to track advertisements nationwide and warn newspapers to remove offending ads.

Fernandez specifically took aim at the newspaper Clarin, a frequent antagonist. She cited the opposition paper's Area 59 section as particularly unethical. Area 59 has included columns of ads for escorts, gym teachers , massage therapists and underwear models offering pleasures without limits . Until now.

The pimps and prostitutes of Yeongdeungpo start the day as if preparing for a siege, stocking their brothels with flammable liquid and gas containers. Large, red-lettered signs warn police that they're willing to die to protect their livelihoods.

We can turn on the gas and light the flames, said a 47-year-old pimp who would only give her surname Sohn. We know that we don't have much chance of winning ... but we're ready to die fighting.

Nearly seven years after tough laws began driving thousands of South Korean prostitutes out of business, the sex workers of the Yeongdeungpo red-light district in Seoul are fighting back, spurred by what they say is an unprecedented campaign of police harassment. Since April they've staged large, sometimes violent, protests that provide a glimpse of the tensions in this fast-changing country as ambitious urban redevelopment projects encroach on old neighborhoods once known for their nightlife.

Rallies by sex workers against police crackdowns crop up occasionally in South Korea, but the protests in Yeongdeungpo, which have drawn hundreds of other prostitutes, pimps and supporters, have been unusual in their size, organization and fury.

The district's 40 to 50 prostitutes describe their fight in life-and-death terms. At a recent protest, about 20 topless women covered in body and face paint doused themselves in flammable liquid and had to be restrained from setting themselves on fire.

Prostitution was banned in South Korea in 1961, but police rarely enforced the law. Tougher legislation was created, however, after a 2002 fire killed 14 women confined at a drinking salon and forced to entertain and sometimes have sex with customers.

About 259,000 people, 70% of them male customers, have been arrested since the new laws took effect in 2004. Nearly 4,000 prostitutes have left their brothels, while 1,800 remain, and seven of the country's 35 major red-light districts have disappeared, according to police records.

Canada's Winnipeg MP, Joy Smith, will introduce legislation to criminalize the act of buying sex.

The new bill will be modelled after the Nordic model of prostitution, which views women who sell sex as 'victims' and those who buy sex as 'criminals and oppressors'.

Smith said she has the backing of the PMO for her new bill.

Currently the law in Canada targets those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it.

That, however, is potentially going to change depending on the outcome of a court case in Ontario where a judge struck down three anti-prostitution laws, including keeping a common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution. The decision has been put on hold pending a government appeal against the case.

Although private member's bills are often considered the lowest of priority and get less time for debate than bills introduced by cabinet, Smith has succeeded in the past to get her bills passed.

Sex workers from Asian backgrounds are fuelling the growth of specialist brothels that offer more exotic services for significantly less money than their Caucasian counterparts, Australian industry sources say.

A review of prostitution laws by the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission found 20% of that state's legal brothels were staffed exclusively by Asian-born women. And police intelligence suggests an even higher proportion of illegal prostitutes are Asian. The situation is the same in other states, a finding of the review that is backed by research from the University of NSW.

The number of Asian sex workers has definitely increased in the last 10 years, Christine Harcourt, author of The Law and Sexworker Health Project, said. More than 50% of women working in Sydney brothels are Asian. There is no suggestion of any sex trafficking. [Asian woman] are very much in demand, Dr Harcourt said: They're very attractive women, they're very good at their work. Australian-born sex workers are usually pretty choosy.

But the national sex workers association, the Scarlet Alliance, said there was no evidence an increasing proportion of prostitutes were Asian. Elena Jeffreys, from the alliance, said the emergence of Asian-only brothels was a reorganisation of the industry .

The owner of two all-Asian brothels in Sydney believes price is the main reason men visit her establishments. It's competitive, said the proprietor, who asked not to be named: There are quite a lot of Asians working ... customers want to see Asian lady in the shop, they like the Asian lady, their appearance.

Former NSW sex industry consultant Chris Seage, who now runs Brothel Busters, which investigates illegal brothels for local councils, said nearly all illegal brothels in Sydney were owned or operated by Asians. He believes legitimate sex workers are an even mix of Caucasian and Asian-born women. Seage said an hour with a Caucasian woman at a Chatswood brothel would cost $300; it would cost $150 with an Asian woman at a brothel in Willoughby.