PRESS RELEASE –
For Distribution
BUYING SEX IS NOT
A SPORT
On
January 25, 2006, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)* launched an
international campaign called: Buying Sex
is not a Sport.
The
campaign protests Germany’s promotion and public display of prostitution during
the
World Cup Games in June/July 2006. The petition is
available in English, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese and already has
been signed by more then 10,000 individuals and organizations
worldwide.
It is estimated that 3 million
football fans – mostly men – will attend the events in the 12 cities hosting the
World Cup Games, and that 40,000 women will be “imported” into Germany from
Central and Eastern Europe to “sexually service” the
men.
Germany legalized pimping and the sex industry in 2002. Now, the industry
is predicting that the legal red light districts will be too small for the
thousands of sport/sex tourists in attendance. Thus, the German sex industry has
erected a massive prostitution complex for the “booming business” expected
during the games. A 3,000 meter
mega brothel has been built next to the main World Cup venue in Berlin to
accommodate 650 male clients. Wooden “sex huts” called “performance
boxes” that look like toilets have been built in fenced-in areas the size
of a football
field, with
condoms, showers and parking for the buyers and a special focus on protecting
their “anonymity.”
Some groups are protesting only the “forced prostitution” and trafficking
in women expected as a result of the Games. But there is a contradiction in
claiming to fight against trafficking while at the same time ignoring or
endorsing the legalized prostitution economy that encourages the physical and psychological
exploitation of women and the marketing of women’s bodies as commodities to be
bought and sold.
The CATW petition, available at http://catwepetition.ouvaton.org/php/index.php, calls upon the 32 countries participating in the World
Cup Games to oppose Germany’s promotion of prostitution and publicly dissociate
their teams from the prostitution industry; urges the FIFA Committee and its
President, J.S. Blatter, to oppose the
link between football and the sex trade; and calls upon the German government
and its chancellor,
Angela
Merkel, to stop this
traffic in women for prostitution and discourage the male demand that fosters
prostitution.
Contact
information:
United
Sates: jgr@catwinternational.org
Latin
America and Caribbean: tulloaz@hotmail.com
Europe
and other countries: catwe@free.fr
*
The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) is a non-governmental
organization with Category II Consultative Status with the United Nations
Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It has regional networks in Africa, Asia
Pacific, Australia, Europe, Latin America and Caribbean and North America.
CATW’s mission is to promote women’s human rights and work internationally to
combat sexual exploitation in all its forms, especially prostitution and
trafficking in women and children. See http://www.catwinternational.org/
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Categories: Releases