Sex Workers and HIV Prevention in Fiji - after the Fiji Crimes Decree ...

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alone with him. Other physical and mental abuses wererecounted by a transgender sex worker:We were told to say things, like they said we have toscream up and tell them that we are sex workers or theprice of how we sell ourselves. During that night thatreminds me that there was no more human rights, andthe only things that I can remember thinking are thatif this continues Fiji would be somewhere like HotelRwanda where most sex workers are first victims ofthis kind of military abuse. (Carrie)This treatment amounts to torture. A number ofexperiences revolved around being made to bathe orbeing made to roll on muddy ground:We were told to put all our things that was in ourpocket and our bag outside, and we were put in thebath for ten minutes and our clothes were all wet. Wewere wearing our clothes, and we got cold but wewere told to stand there in the bathroom and bathe…One of our friends was cold and wanted to stophaving her bath, but then she was punched to bath.After ten minutes, we were taken to roll on the groundin our wet clothes. We lay on the ground and we haveto count the stars in our wet clothes. (Susan)They told us to take everything off, even ourunderwear and our bra. They burnt our wigs, bra andthey told us to roll on the wet ground covered withdamp soil. They punched us. They kicked us. Theydidn’t charge us, they just tortured us. (Magda)The soldiers tortured me. They said that I used todeal the girls [act as a pimp] that stand on the road,that I’m the dealer. I said ‘no’ that I’m not a dealerand that the girls can do whatever they want to dobecause they are the boss of themselves. Theytortured me and they punched me at the camp, theypunch me and slap me. They asked me if I’m thedealer and I kept on saying ‘no’ because I didn’tknow anything and they tortured me. (Lynette)We were told to roll on the ground and then crawl,how the army always do while they train. We werescolded and kicked and they told us not to come tothat place again, if we come back there, they will getthe termite and put it in our pants. (Gabrielle)After being detained for the night and enduring hoursof physical and mental abuse, the sex workers werethen subjected to forced labour. This included cleaningthe soldiers’ dormitories and barracks grounds. It alsoinvolved being taken into town and forced to cleandrains and roads as stipulated by someone from the CityCouncil in Lautoka.We woke up early in the morning and we were toldto go and clean up their room. After cleaning theirroom we were told to go and iron our clothes and towear it again. After we changed our clothes we werethen told to go and scrub their kitchen, which wasreally dirty. We went and cleaned their kitchen; wescrubbed the black stains that were there until it wasclean. (Susan)Sex WoRKeRS and HIV PreveNTIon in Fiji - After The Fiji Crimes Decree 2009The bathing process seems to be designed to show thesex workers that they are dirty and need to be cleansed.Similarly, there were reports from Suva interviewees thattwo sex workers who had recently been apprehended bysome military personnel had been forced to crawl in themud and then to jump into the sea. They were reportedlytold to ‘Go in the sea, wash their pussy’, whereuponempty bottles were thrown at them. Those events in Suva,however, did not take place on the army grounds.Apart from sex workers reporting being punched andkicked by members of the military during detention at thebase, other types of physical abuse included:We have to wake up between every three to fourhours and do squats like duck walk along the groundlike say about ten metres to 15 metres… We weremade to place a cone that’s used for traffic on ourhead and then they put the wigs right on top andthey tell us to leap one leg up to our knees and pullour ears and keep on saying ‘I will never sell myselfagain’. (Carrie)We were told to pick up the rubbish at theircompound. We picked up the rubbish from there andwe went to pick up the rubbish at the other barracks,which is on the opposite side of the road. After that,we were brought back to the barrack on top and wewere taken in the car and we were told to go andpick up rubbish at Natokawaqa. We picked a lotof rubbish from the housing barrack and then wepicked up the rubbish from another drain. (Gabrielle)Driving women and transgenders through town on theopen back of a military vehicle parades them to thepublic. As one interviewee pointed out, when peoplesee women on the back of a military truck at night theyknow it can only mean one thing: the women are sexworkers. The outing and shaming of sex workers is furtherachieved when the detained sex workers are put towork the next day, in full public view, still in their eveningclothes, on various council street and drain cleaningprojects.16
Monday morning we were taken for this communitywork. We had to clean this drain for hours. We startedat 8.30, and we were told just to behave like it wasa community work – not to act suspiciously in frontof the public and we were cleaning this long drain.(Carrie)The detained workers were supervised by members ofthe military, but the work to be done was arranged withand designated by a person at the Council, who also tookresponsibility for providing lunch – if any was given:After a while the big boss comes in and tells us ‘waitwe’ll give you work to do today’ so he calls up theCouncil and he asks the council which places dothey want to clean up. So the council tells them theplace, next thing we know we were being told to getin the vehicle. We were taken to the roundabout andwe were told to pick rubbish from there right up to thehospital roundabout. So we started, started, started.There were two soldiers supervising us. We started,started. They were holding the sack and we weredoing the cleaning. We had about 50 sacks that dayand so they said ‘look if you can fill up the 50 sacksthen fill it up and we’ll call it a day’. So we made itour business to fill up the 50 sacks around the road.[When] we had completed it, they told us that wecould go home. (Maria)The new dangers attached to being identified as a sexworker are reflected in the closure of one – highlysuccessful and popular – program for sex workers runby an NGO. After the Crimes Decree came into force thatparticular service provider almost immediately ceased alltargeted programs with sex workers, in part because theyfeared that the weekly meetings could provide:an opportunity for police to come around and go ‘weknow that you guys are all sex workers, when we seeyou on the street we’ll know that you’re a sex workerso we’ll pick you up’ … The police know they are sexworkers and therefore see them in a corner dressedin drag and that’s all they need to haul them off.To sum up, although the female and transgender sexworkers who had been detained by the military are olderand street-hardened, a number of them were utterlytraumatised by their experience of detention. Carriestated, ‘For the last 15 years I haven’t come through anexperience like what I’ve experienced on September[date deleted], 2010’. Lynette said that she had lost allbelief that she had any rights or access to justice as sheproclaimed:From that night I know the law: They said that therewere no more human rights, there were no law.(Lynette)All the sex worker experiences of process and conditionsof detainment by military in Lautoka are similar andconsistent, although these events occurred over a periodof more than a year. This indicates that this is not theresult of random actions on the part of individuals, but inkeeping with a planned approach to the military policingof sex work in the Lautoka area. Furthermore, there isobvious complicity by at least some individuals at theLautoka City Council in the forced labour of the detainedsex workers, and the concomitant human rights abuses.Well-known, high-profile and regular sex workersare those who are getting picked up by the military.According to Bree, the military ‘assume’ they are sexworkers because they are hanging around ‘hotspots’ inLautoka. Others point out that sex workers are known inthe communities and villages that they live in, and thatmilitary personnel are part of those communities too:We know each other because it’s such a small place.In Lautoka three or four soldiers could be livingaround the neighbourhood – we know each other,they would grow up with you or you attend the samechurch. Them coming down to us to the street andtrying to chase us off the street is quite new. (Maria)In Suva, there was less evidence of military activityfocused on sex work, and the few isolated actionsreported do not appear to be part of an organisedprogram, nor do they implicate the army base itself inthe same manner as do events in Lautoka. While a localcommunity-based sex worker organisation said that itsmembers ‘have witnessed and have been told by othersex workers that the military take them to remote areasand leave them there, or take them to the sea and getthem to swim out’, none of their members have hadinteractions with military personnel themselves .It is clear that the army is acting outside the law indetaining and abusing sex workers, and that thedetention and punishment of the sex workers occurswithout due process or regard for human rights.However, this military activity appears to be inspired bySection 231 of the Crimes Decree – and in particularthe provision for arrest on suspicion. In each of theincidents the sex workers described, the detained sexworkers were led to believe – on the basis of the soldiers’words and actions – that the law now allows for arreston suspicion of intention to sell sex. This is a valid andunderstandable conclusion in the light of the recent tacticof picking up known sex workers who are present inSex WoRKeRS and HIV PreveNTIon in Fiji - After The Fiji Crimes Decree 200917
Page 1 and 2: Sex Workers and HIVPrevention in Fi
Page 3 and 4: Table of CONTENTSINTRODUCTION......
Page 5 and 6: iNTRODUCTIONOn 1 February 2010, the
Page 7 and 8: The Risky Business: Sex Work and HI
Page 9 and 10: Media representation of sex workund
Page 11 and 12: Arrest and prosecution dataIntervie
Page 13 and 14: ResultsThe resultant sex worker int
Page 15: and tell them to go home, the sex w
Page 19 and 20: Before, when there was no Crime Dec
Page 21 and 22: From the sex workers’ point of vi
Page 23 and 24: Sex worker communityThe targeting a
Page 25 and 26: iskier for them. This may make the
Page 27 and 28: References†. Harcourt C, Egger S
Page 32: International HIV Research GroupSam

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