Prostitution in the Netherlands
[citation needed] Typical is the following decree from the city of Amsterdam in 1413: During the sixteenth century, attitudes about sexuality changed under the influence of the Spanish occupation and rising Protestantism.
[citation needed] During the eighteenth century, the morals preached by the church and government became more in line with certain developments within Dutch society.
[citation needed] At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the armies of Napoleon started to regulate prostitution in the Netherlands (in 1810) to protect soldiers against venereal diseases.
[3] When the Dutch government legalized prostitution in 2000, it was to protect the women by giving them work permits, but authorities now fear that this business is out of control: "We've realized this is no longer about small-scale entrepreneurs, but those big crime organizations are involved here in trafficking women, drugs, killings, and other criminal activities", said Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam.
[citation needed] In 2005 Amma Asante and Karina Schaapman, two councilors for the Labour Party (Netherlands), wrote a report, "Het onzichtbare zichtbaar gemaakt" (Making the Invisible Visible).
They concluded that a large number of prostitutes in Amsterdam were being forced to work and were being abused by pimps and criminal gangs, and that the goals of legalization were failing.
[5][6] In response to the problems associated with the involvement of organized crime into the sex trade, the Dutch government has decided to close numerous prostitution businesses.
To counter negative news reports, the district organized an open house day in 2007 and a statue to an unknown sex worker was unveiled, "intended to honor those employed in the industry world-wide.
"[7] In September 2007 it was announced that the city of Amsterdam was buying several buildings in the Red-light district from Charles Geerts in order to close about a third of the windows.
[8] At the end of 2008, Mayor Cohen announced plans to close half of the city's 400 prostitution windows because of suspected criminal gang activity.
[9] This comes at the same time as the Government's decision to ban the sale of "magic mushrooms" and the closure of all coffee shops situated near schools.
"[9] In 2009 the Dutch justice ministry announced the appointment of a special public prosecutor charged with closing down prostitution windows and coffee shops connected to organized crime syndicates.
The 70-year-old twin sisters Louise and Martine Fokkens, who have worked for decades as prostitutes in the Red-light districts of Amsterdam, were the subject of a 2011 film and a 2012 book.
[12] Due to the coronavirus pandemic, all legally operating brothels in the Netherlands were closed on 15 March 2020, based on emergency orders from their police district.
[14] As the Netherlands went into a semi lock-down, questions were raised in Dutch parliament about sex workers who had to continue to work to pay their bills, or even buy food.
[citation needed] According to a road map for relaxing of anti-Corona-measures presented by the Dutch government, the reopening of brothels in the Netherlands was supposed to take place in September 2020.
[23] From 1 January 2022, a customer will be punished if they purchase a sexual service from a sex worker of whom they know or have serious reason to suspect that there is coercion, exploitation or human trafficking.
[citation needed] An article published in 1997 in the International Encyclopedia of Sexuality claimed that the total number of prostitutes in the Netherlands was about 15,000 to 20,000.
[25] CATW has stated that there were 30,000 prostitutes in the Netherlands, citing "Sex tax Ticks off Dutch," Associated Press, 14 October 1997.
[27] An article written by Marie-Victoire Louis in Le Monde diplomatique in 1997, claimed that 80% of sex workers in Amsterdam were foreigners and 70% had no immigration papers (but did not quote the source).
[citation needed] Some Dutch cities provide facilities called "afwerkplek", a sex drive-in enclosure for cars for street prostitution.
[33] According to Radio Netherlands in 2012, prostitution was concentrated in and around the big cities and in the border towns in the regions of Limburg, Groningen, Twente, West Brabant and Zeeland.
[36] Red Light United was founded in 2019 as a trade union of (mostly migrant) window workers on De Wallen in Amsterdam.
[39] Amsterdam is also home to several international sex worker organisations, labour unions, networks, support groups and programmes.
[40] TAMPEP, founded in 1993, based in Amsterdam and hosted from Helsinki, calls itself the "European Network for HIV/STI Prevention and Health Promotion among Migrant Sex Workers".
[43] In addition, the La Strada International Association (LSI) is an Amsterdam-based anti-trafficking organisation which has the decriminalisation of sex work as a "strategic focus area".
[45] Countries that are major sources of trafficked persons include Thailand, India, the Netherlands, Mexico, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Sierra Leone, and Romania.
[citation needed] Within the Netherlands, victims are often recruited by so-called "loverboys" – men who seduce young Dutch women and girls and later coerce them into prostitution.
[50] Many victims of human trafficking are led to believe by organized criminals that they are being offered work in hotels or restaurants or in child care and are forced into prostitution with the threat or actual use of violence.
[51][52] [53] At the end of 2008, a gang of six people was sentenced to prison terms of eight months to 7½ years in what prosecutors said was the worst case of human trafficking ever brought to trial in the Netherlands.
