PARIS: As Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics, an undocumented Chinese sex worker named Hua says increased police patrols are threatening her career.
“I feel very pressured. I feel scared all the time. Every day there are police searches,” said the 55-year-old, who used a different name to avoid being recognized.
“So I went out to work less and less.”
According to government and charity estimates, there are around 40,000 people in France, mostly women, who are in prostitution or are exploited for sex work.
Under French law, selling sex is permitted, but exploiting or paying for sex is illegal, which makes both the sex provider and the client criminally liable.
However, it becomes more complicated if the sex worker is undocumented.
“I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to work on the streets during the Olympics,” added the divorcee who came to France seven years ago hoping to earn a decent wage as a house cleaner and was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“If they arrest me, I will be sent back to China and they will not let me receive medical treatment there.”
Inside the offices of the charity Medecins du Monde (Doctors Worldwide) in Belleville, northeast of Paris, she burst into tears.
“I don’t understand what we ever did to anyone,” the Chinese woman said, adding that she sometimes sold her services to better-off clients for as little as 20 euros ($21) because “they had no money, and I didn’t either.”
In another part of Paris, on a street notorious for prostitution near the city center, Mylene Joost is looking for a client.
She said she was most concerned about new safety regulations that restrict pedestrian movement and traffic around Paris.
“Our regular customers probably won’t be able to go because there are so many restrictions,” said Just, 50, who has been a sex worker for 22 years.
“I don’t think the tourists walking by will jump on us, so we’ll get out of here,” she added.
Ahead of the opening ceremony of a two-week sports festival on the banks of the Seine on Friday, sex workers like Hua and Juste have virtually disappeared from their usual haunts in Paris.
But since most sex trafficking is now done online, police fighting sexual exploitation are also focusing their efforts there.
“Customers go to the website, choose a category, price and time,” a policewoman specializing in the problem told AFP.
It's like ordering food online, “except there are girls delivering it,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the nature of her job.
Medecins du Monde, an organization that works to support sex workers through virtual platforms, recently revealed that it saw more than 46,000 ads on a popular website in a single night.
Through the charity's Jasmine Project, since 2019, sex workers have reported tens of thousands of “at-risk” or “dangerous” clients to warn others about these groups of clients.
The pre-match preparations also coincide with a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, issued on Thursday, which found that France's criminalization of sex worker clients does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling has disappointed some right-wing groups, who argue that France's policies have only exacerbated the stigmatization of sex workers.
“Criminalization has led to an increase in physical attacks, sexual violence and police abuse of sex workers, while having no clear impact on eliminating human trafficking,” said Erin Kilbride, a women’s and LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
French officials expect the gang, which promotes women from Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay, to continue advertising during the tournament.
They predict that high-end prostitution may increase as more wealthy tourists arrive.
But they remain concerned about the increase in child abuse in recent years, including vulnerable girls in state care.
Around 20,000 young people are sexually exploited in France, according to human rights group Acting Against the Prostitution of Children.
In May, a court sentenced five men to prison for paying for sex with a 12-year-old girl, in a rare case that has ever been tried in court.
She was scammed after running away from home.
