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

identified ‘hotspots’ regardless of their actual behaviourat the time.Moreover, some soldiers did invoke the Crimes Decreeand its terms in justification of their actions when theypicked up sex workers. In Lautoka, where militarypersonnel regularly engage in the enforcement of the‘Prostitution offences’:generating anxieties about income, the fear of arrestforces sex work to become more clandestine:You have to be very cautious eh so that you are notseen and caught. So whatever you do, you do it ina way that no one sees it, that no one knows whatyou’re doing. (Bree)One of the soldiers, they said that the Crime Decreecame into effect so, so you can’t do this [stand on thestreet at night], it’s not allowed. (Magda)While the military invoke the law when they take sexworkers into custody, they also threaten the sex workerswith punishment way outside the terms of the law:We were told that if we are going to be caughtagain, we will be taken to go and bath where thepigs always bath, at the pigsty. There are twopunishments, if we are caught again we will be takento the pigsty, after that if we’re caught again wewill be locked up in a container which contains thesoldiers’ shit, we will be locked inside, that is the thirdpunishment. The fourth punishment, we will spendsix years in jail and there won’t be any court hearing.(Susan)They didn’t charge us, but they say if we will comethere twice or three times they’ll put us in prison. Ifnot, they’ll take us to this one church denominationeh. They’ll take us to be part of that denomination.(Betty)The detention and abuse of sex workers has certainlyengendered fear in the community. Bree told us:Doing sex work is now hidden and they don’t takechances when they pick up clients… they are afraidof the place to meet their client and have contact bymobile phone. (Catherine)Sex work becomes a more covert and isolated activityas opposed to the more public and collective endeavourthat was characteristic of Fijian sex work in 2009. Nowsex workers have less contact with one another. Breesaid, ‘It’s mostly done now by phone contact … it’s nowprivate, like it’s hidden now’. As working from streets andbars becomes more perilous, sex workers move to newplaces. Even the motels are more difficult to work out of,and a number of sex workers have begun to work fromhome or in dark places:The Crimes Decree is hard for us sex workersbecause sometimes we can’t display ourselvesnicely on the street. Like we are just frightened andwe always hide, sometimes even when there’s a lotof clients, when they go past we’re hiding inside thebushes. (Miranda)Samantha also talked about what she called the increasein ‘undercover’, by which she meant new, more secretivesex workers, who unlike the better networked and moreexperienced sex workers, ‘are ashamed of using thecondom … Those are the type that don’t use condom’.Sex WoRKeRS and HIV PreveNTIon in Fiji - After The Fiji Crimes Decree 2009For me when this law came I didn’t go to town for twomonths. I didn’t go because I heard that some of myfriends have been taken to the army camp and theyput the cone on them. (Bree)Changes in sex worker practiceSex work is still driven by financial need in Fiji. A recentheightened fear of arrest, detention and physical abusechanges the way sex work is carried out. Sex workersworry about the army patrolling the streets and the effectit will have on their ability to feed their families. As Angiesays: ‘My perspective about this Crimes Decree is thatfor us when we stand there [on the street], we stand tolook for our money for our bread and butter’. Along withA trend to more hidden and hard-to-reach sex workersis extremely problematic for HIV prevention as well asundermining other aspects of sex worker safety. Theincreasingly isolated nature of sex work makes sexworkers less accessible to outreach, peer educationand condom distribution services. There is also adiminishment of opportunity and motivation in the sexworker community for the sharing of resources andknowledge that was such a strong feature in the 2009Risky Business research.For the sex workers, financial pressures remain but therisks attached to sex work increase. Mary-Alice talks ofsome sex workers moving from sex work into burglary:18