Greece’s once-thriving sex industry has become the latest victim of the country’s debt crisis as Greeks spend less on erotic toys, pornography and titillating underwear.
About 50 people, almost all young men, lined up on Friday as the Athens Erotic Dream - Greece’s biggest sex fair - opened its gates in a nondescript building squeezed against a highway on the outskirts of the capital.
The annual show attracted big crowds when it opened in 2008, at the height of Greece’s debt-fuelled economic bubble. But interest has wilted alongside the Greek economy, mired in its fifth consecutive year of recession.
The austerity measures Greece adopted as part of the country’s international bailout deal have led to record unemployment, while wage cuts and tax hikes have throttled consumer spending.
The sex industry is feeling the hit. The number of exhibitors has fallen by half since 2008 to about a dozen, said the fair’s organizer George Chrysospathis - a grey-bearded, corpulent man whose jovial manner changes quickly if he spots anyone who has failed to pay the 15-euro entry fee.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has expressed its concern over recent actions by Greek authorities involving the arrest, detention, mandatory HIV testing, publication of photographs and personal details, and pressing of criminal charges against at least 12 sex workers, according to a UNAIDS statement. In addition to initiating criminal prosecution against HIV-positive sex workers for intentional gross bodily harm, Greece has raised the concerns of UNAIDS because of immigration legislation adopted in April that appears to provide for automatic detention of migrants and asylum-seekers who have an infectious disease, or who belong to a group at high risk of infection, without consideration of whether they pose an actual risk.
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Medical tests conducted on dozens of prostitutes by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KEEL) in the past two days have revealed that 12 of the sex workers are HIV positive, according to KEEL.
Following the publication of the photograph of a 22-year-old Russian sex worker on Sunday, the police on Tuesday uploaded photos of another 11 prostitutes working in Athens onto the website www.hellenicpolice.gr and appealed to those who have had sexual contact with them to contact authorities for health checks and treatment.
The 12 women are to face a prosecutor on Friday on charges of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm, a felony.
The publication of the women’s photographs has caused an outcry about personal privacy on social networking websites. But police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis said in a posting on his Twitter account that the photos had been published for the public good following a prosecutor’s order and that further approval from the Hellenic Data Protection Authority was not needed.
KEEL officials said the center had received over 1,000 calls since Monday from men who have had unprotected sex with the Russian prostitute or with other sex workers. More than half of these men are undergoing tests while three are already receiving antiretroviral drugs, according to KEEL.