PARIS: Paris is hosting the 2024 Olympic Games. Chinese sex worker Hua, who does not have a residence permit, complains that increased police patrols are threatening her livelihood.
“I really feel under pressure, I'm constantly afraid. There are police checks every day,” said the 55-year-old, who used a different name to avoid being recognized.
“That’s why I go to work less and less.”
According to government and aid organization estimates, around 40,000 people in France – the vast majority of them women – are sexually sold or exploited for that purpose.
Under French law, the sale of sex is legal, but the exploitation of a person or payment for sex is illegal, making pimps and clients criminally liable.
However, things become more complicated if the sex worker does not have any papers.
“I am so afraid of being arrested that I will not work on the streets during the Olympics,” added the divorced woman, who came to France seven years ago hoping to earn a decent wage as a domestic helper and was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“If they arrest me, they will send me back to China and not give me any medical care there.”
She burst into tears in an office of the charity Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) in the northeastern Paris district of Belleville.
“I don't understand. What have we done to anyone?” says the Chinese woman, who says she sometimes sells her services to nicer clients for as little as 20 euros ($21) because “they don't have any money and neither do I.”
In another part of Paris, on a street famous for sex trafficking near the city center, Mylene Juste was looking for customers.
What bothers her most, she says, are the new safety regulations that restrict pedestrian and car traffic in Paris.
“Due to the many restrictions, our regular customers will not be able to make it,” says Juste, 50, who has been a sex worker for 22 years.
“And I don't think the tourists passing by are going to jump on us. So let's get out of here,” she added.
Ahead of the opening ceremony of the two-week sports festival on Friday along the Seine, sex workers like Hua and Juste virtually disappeared from their usual Parisian hangouts.
However, since sex trafficking now largely takes place online, police officers are also concentrating their efforts to combat sexual exploitation there.
“Customers go to a website, select a category, a price and a time,” a police officer specialising in the problem told AFP.
It's like ordering food online, “except it's girls” getting the delivery, she said, asking to remain anonymous because of the nature of her work.
The organization Médecins du Monde, which also tries to support sex workers virtually, said it recently saw more than 46,000 ads on a popular website in a single evening.
As part of the charity's Jasmine Project, sex workers have reported tens of thousands of “risky” or “dangerous” clients since 2019 to warn others about them.
Preparations for the Games also coincided with a major ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced on Thursday, which ruled that France's criminalization of sex workers' clients did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling disappointed some far-right groups who argue that French policies only exacerbate the stigmatization of sex workers.
“Criminalization leads to physical attacks, sexual violence, and police brutality against people who sell sex, but has no demonstrable effect on eradicating trafficking,” said Erin Kilbride, women's and LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The French authorities assume that female advertising gangs from Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay will continue to advertise during the Games.
They assume that high-class prostitution could increase due to the expected wealthy visitors.
However, they remain concerned about the increase in cases of abuse of minors in recent years, including vulnerable young girls in state care.
According to the human rights group Acting Against the Prostitution of Children, around 20,000 minors are sexually exploited in France.
In May, a court sentenced five men to prison for paying for sex with a 12-year-old girl, a rare case of such a crime to go to trial.
She was employed as a pimp after running away from home.
