But what has the Dutch government themselves done thus far to prevent this from happening, and fight human trafficking? The government has made human trafficking illegal, and with that I mean, they made it illegal to exploit someone and they made forced labor illegal, both things that where already illegal but apparently needed another law specifically so we can call it human trafficking. And they made it illegal for someone else to help a prostitute crossing a border to work in prostitution.
I've already talked about that before in this post here, that prostitutes need help to get started here. But the people helping are by default criminals for the human trafficking law, even if the prostitute herself agrees on it, and even if those human traffickers have no bad intentions at all. In short, it's illegal to help a girl into prostitution, no matter if she agrees on it or not.
But what has the government done to prevent this from happening? Did they come up with an idea how to support people from entering prostitution in a save way if they want it? No! And because the government doesn't offer a solution for this, it leaves prostitutes no other choice but to get help from a human trafficker, and thereby becoming a victim of human trafficking themselves. In other words, it's the government themselves that drives prostitutes into the hands of human traffickers, because of a lack of support for prostitutes.
If the government was to help women who want to enter prostitution, there would be no need for the prostitutes to accept help from others. Instantly you would make it safer for prostitutes to enter prostitution in the first place, and you help prevent prostitutes from falling in the wrong hands. You could fight human trafficking, exploitation and forced prostitution all at the same time.
In stead they choose to not support prostitutes in any way, keep on making new rules to try and catch human traffickers, which only backfires (closing windows, prostitution registrations etc.), and on top of that close safe work places, leaving prostitutes no option but to move to unsafe work places, with as a result that again they could fall into the hands of a human trafficker.
Sometimes it almost looks like the government wants prostitutes to become victims of human trafficking, they push girls with so many things into that direction, that you'd almost begin to wonder if they want to create more victims or less. Almost like they're interested in creating so many victims, that eventually they will just say legalizing prostitution was a bad idea, because they only got more victims. Well, of course, if you push girls into human trafficking with these kind of laws, no wonder you create more victims.
What I don't understand is why the government doesn't do anything to help girls get started in prostitution. There's obviously a need for help since a lot of girls want it, and that help now comes from people who are being called pimps or human traffickers, even though many of them have no bad intentions at all. In fact, most people who are considered by law to be human traffickers are not bad people at all, but rather just people helping prostitutes, many of them are prostitutes themselves, working here and helping friends to come over here. Only a few people with bad intentions take advantage of girls who need help, and afterwards start to demand for more money, but this is only a small portion. Most of these people helping prostitutes are just providing a service to help the girls get started, a service the government neglects to provide.
Within these services we can count in financial help to get started, a bank loan for instance would solve this problem, but right now prostitutes by default can't get a loan from a bank, and also many people from Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary) get refused for a bank loan. The government has done nothing to improve the situation of prostitutes towards banks. Prostitutes in Holland these days still can't even get a bank account from most banks (except ING, but only personal bank accounts and not business bank accounts), let alone a loan or a mortgage.
Secondly housing is a service these people offer help with. Prostitutes are often refused apartments solely based on their jobs, and this comes from the bad reputation prostitution has. A campaign to improve the reputation of prostitution, and perhaps a law to forbid people from asking people about their jobs would solve this problem. You can still show papers that can prove your income, and give house owners their guarantee, but there's no need for them to know exactly what job you're doing, in my opinion that's privacy. It prevents people from getting discriminated based on their profession. Right now the government does nothing for this, and they're surprised when they find 10 girls living together, and think it's suspicious and a sign of human trafficking, while many of these girls live together simply because they can't find a place to live.
A third service these people offer is good information. The government spends right now a lot of money on telling you what not to do in prostitution, and how to not become a victim of human trafficking, but nobody tells you how to start this job in a safe way. And there's no information available out there to inform girls about the reality of prostitution in stead of the stories all people hear on TV. I myself had a very different idea about prostitution before I started talking with the people that helped me to come here, but thanks to them I got good information about this profession which changed my mind and eventually made me decide to come here. Again a campaign with good information about prostitution would be the solution here, but all the government does is warn you about the bad things in prostitution, and not how to start it.
These people who are now being considered criminals for helping prostitutes, because the government neglects to help us, would in any other profession considered to be unemployment agency helping people to find a job. These people help to fight the unemployment in Europe, one of the biggest problems the European Union has right now, and yet they're being considered criminals. And why is it no problem to help someone find a job in another country, except when it's prostitution? The only reason I can think of why this is illegal, is because people 'think' prostitution is a job nobody would want to do, and therefore by default all prostitutes must be victims, but that's simply not true. In fact, most of the women from Eastern Europe come here, because prostitution is legal, and thereby safe to work, something their own country doesn't have.
And all of this is happening because of a stupid human trafficking law that forbids things that where already illegal (exploitation, and forced labor), but also forbids people from helping prostitutes if they want help.
In that way, the government doesn't seem to want to prevent girls from becoming victims of human trafficking, but rather prevent girls from entering prostitution at all. And my question would be to the government, why are you preventing girls from entering prostitution, when you made it a legal job yourselves?
Dutch version
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar