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Title – 6637 FIJI: Sunday Times editorial on tough new sex industry laws
Date – 31 January 2010
Byline – None
Origin – Pacific Media Watch
Source – The Sunday Times (Fiji) 31/1/10
Copyright – FT
Status – Unabridged
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Sunday Times editorial:
ALL MUST PAY
www.fijitimes.com/articleindex.aspx?date=2010/01/31
SUVA (Sunday Times editorial/Pacific Media Watch): Tough new laws against prostitution are welcome in [Fiji,] a country in which the sex trade has become more sophisticated over the years.
Just over 20 years ago, prostitution was confined to a number of seedy brothels in the main urban centres.
There was also a brisk trade on the wharves where prostitutes routinely went aboard the ships to provide sex for pay. It was from this activity that sex workers of the time earned the derisive Fijian term "kaba waqa", literally boat climber - a term which has endured for several decades and is considered the indigenous word for prostitute.
After the 1987 coup, prostitutes could no longer access the wharves and the trade was taken ashore to a number of small hostels, boarding houses and motels.
Indeed the term motel is sometimes used mostly in street talk as a term for brothel or a place where a room can be let for an hour or two for the sole purpose of drinking and sex.
There are a number of motels and small hotels which make a brisk trade from the provision of these services.
Police officers in Suva know of at least six such places which operate day and night for the benefit of sex workers and their clients.
In some cases the operators of these businesses arrange for girls to be provided for customers at an additional cost. Another part of the sex trade is the provision of women for men who work aboard the fishing ships which regularly berth in Suva. There are specific contact persons ashore, known to the shipping company and crew, who provide services after the necessary telephone call is made.
In Nadi and Lautoka, there is a superior level of prostitution in which women provide companionship at an evening function or dinner before having sex with the customer at a hotel or home. This call-girl service is restricted and expensive but exists nonetheless.
Activists point out that without demand for these services, prostitution would not flourish. The sad reality is that prostitution exists because of a demand from men and, to a lesser extent, women.
Police must ensure that not only sex workers are targeted when the new laws come into effect. Every effort must also be made to arrest and charge the men who have the audacity to take advantage of the women who sell their bodies for money.
We must not forget the pimps and motel owners who are equally responsible for this trade.
They must all face justice.
* See "Penalty for prostitution" , Fiji Times, 30 January 2010: www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?ref=archive&id=138711
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