I am happy to be here as I can speak for myself rather than someone else speaking for me,” announced Daisy, a sex worker from Uganda at the Sex Worker Freedom Festival, a gathering of over 550 representatives of sex worker organizations from 41 countries. The festival, which takes place this year from July 22 to 27 in Kolkata, India, was created as an alternative to the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. this week, because U.S. travel restrictions have denied entry to sex workers from around the world.
Recognizing that sex workers play a key role in the conversation on the spread of HIV/AIDS, the Sex Worker Freedom Festival was organized by the Darbur Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a collective of 65,000 sex workers in West Bengal, and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), an international NGO for the human rights of sex workers. The conference is also put on in association with the International AIDS Society, Different Avenues, a D.C.-based sex worker rights organization, and several other international associations.
Even though President Barack Obama lifted travel restrictions on HIV-positive people in 2009, restrictions against sex workers and drug users remain. The Sex Worker Freedom Festival protests U.S. “moral turpitude” laws, which bar anyone who has practiced prostitution in the last 10 years from entering the country, even if it was in a locale where prostitution is legal. This law prevents international sex worker organizations from joining the global conversation on HIV/AIDS.
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Hundreds of commercial sex workers at popular pubs in Gulu Town are on the run, following the arrest of dozens of their colleagues over the illicit trade. The northern regional police spokesperson, Mr Johnson Kilama, said they apprehended dozens of sex workers and committed them to court.
“Our next plan is to storm night clubs and pubs and apprehend those who are still carrying on with the business,” Mr Kilama said. However, sex workers who talked to this newspaper on condition of anonymity, said some of the law enforcers are their clients, but the problem arose because most of them do not want to pay.
Making ends meet?
“We do this kind of business to make ends meet. If we are not interfering with their duty to protect life and property, why don’t they leave us alone?” said a commercial sex worker one of the pubs.
The Laroo Division chairperson, Mr Moses Abonga, without revealing details, said there are “big shots in the region who are behind the prostitution business”. However, Ms Anna Atto, 68, from Lamogi Sub-county, Amuru District, decried the way young girls have discredited themselves by becoming sex workers. “In our times, prostitution was unheard of. Children were communally owned and it was a responsibility of the entire community in upbringing the children unlike these days when children have no respect,” she said.
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Prostitutes are good for Uganda’s economy. They spend a fortune on clothes, shoes and make-up. They also keep a certain section of the population happy. Yet sex workers are discriminated against and deprived of HIV/AIDS education. Some hope to change that.
“Clients can rape me, steal my money or clothes or leave without paying me. They know I can’t go to the police because, as a sex worker, I’ll get arrested," says Daisy Nakato. The 30-year-old Ugandan started getting paid for sex when she was 17.
"What I do is illegal. Every time I see a uniform, I need to run,” she continues. “Same goes for healthcare. My job is a strain to my body, but when I go to the doctor, I have to lie. Because when I tell the truth, they will call everybody to come stare at me. I fear going to the hospital. But I’m also a citizen, a human being.”
Daisy was infected with HIV by one of her first clients. Still, she regularly services over 20 men a night.
Penis panic
The government has vowed to increase vigilance on the use of pornographic materials, particularly among youths.
This is after government re-tabled the Anti Pornography bill before Parliament.
The bill, which was tabled by Ethics and Integrity Minister, Rev. Fr. Simon Lokodo, seeks to penalize any persons found selling or distributing pornographic materials.
According to the bill, any person found guilty of dealing in pornographic materials risks paying heavy fines or a 10-year jail sentence or both.
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