Amsterdam’s sex workers protest new red light district rules

Sex workers are protesting Amsterdam’s new regulations as the city looks to tone down rambunctious drunken tourism in its infamous red light district.

A new curfew this month forces sex work businesses to close their doors at 3 a.m. rather than 6 a.m. — a move the workers say will drastically affect their earnings and put them in danger on their way home.

“Most of the workers start to work after 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning, when the bars start to close down,” Felicia Anna, a former sex worker who declined to use her real name for privacy reasons, told CNN.

“Now you have maybe two hours to make any money, which is not enough.”

Anna has lived in the city for 13 years and heads the union, Red Light United, for the window workers in the district. The union and others were behind a petition that called for more police instead of reduced hours as well as nixing the relocation of businesses outside the city to a proposed “erotic center.”

Another sex worker, Violet, who also used an alias, explained the safety concerns brought on by the new hours.

“If you’re traveling home at 3 o’clock in the morning, especially if everything is closed, then that leaves you, as a sex worker, in greater vulnerability,” Violet told CNN.

Because workers are usually paid in cash, Violet, who is also a coordinator for the Prostitution Information Center, pointed out that “traveling around with a lot of cash” at 3 a.m. “gives people who would wish to do us harm an opportunity to do so.”

The reduced hours are the most recent restrictions the city has enacted in what it claims is an attempt to curb nuisance behavior.

Government officials have also proposed legislation to restrict alcohol sales, vacation rentals, smoking on the streets and to build an erotic center outside the city that would relocate hundreds of sex businesses.

“The red light district is one of the oldest and smallest parts of our city, but it is currently spilling over with bachelor parties and tourists dressed up in penis suits, harassing sex workers,” Ilana Rooderkerk, head of the local liberal-democratic D66 party, told the Guardian.

“We want the men and women working as sex workers to be able to do their work safely, but we also want the ‘monkey watching’ to be a thing of the past. The erotic center needs to put an end to nuisance in the red light district … without causing nuisance somewhere else.”

According to Amsterdam’s website, the city is one of the most visited in the world, with about 20 million tourists coming every year — many of whom book their trip to explore the notorious red light district, where prostitution and marijuana are legal.

Thursday’s city council meeting was focused on discussing possible location options for the proposed erotic center to replace the district in the ancient city center.

Proponents argue that an erotic center will relieve some of the congestion and disorderly behavior in the city center. Critics claim that it will draw seedy or obnoxious crowds to residential neighborhoods, allow for more organized crime, and put sex workers in unsafe situations as window displays are swapped for closed spaces and the number of sex businesses are reduced from 250 to 100.

“If you move the red light district out, you are going to get more concentrated behaviors in an area which can’t be monitored as well, and isn’t subject to public scrutiny,” Violet said.

Thijs Weijland, an employee but not a sex worker for a brothel in the red light district, told Dutch News that government officials “are always talking about sex workers but not with them.

“I don’t know a single sex worker who says the erotic center is a good idea. We must not make them the victims of politics.”

Topics of sex work and prostitution are hotly debated around the world, but have recently bubbled up in the city famous for its sex tourism.

Amsterdam launched a new ad campaign trying to deter party-loving British tourists.

Sofyan Mbarki, Amsterdam’s deputy mayor, said the latest ad campaign was an effort for the city to continue to crack down on bad behavior in the capital following ads in 2018 targeting British and Dutch men.

“Visitors will still be welcome, but not if they misbehave and cause a nuisance,” Mbarki said in a statement about the ads.

“Amsterdam is a metropolis and that includes bustle and liveliness, but to keep our city livable, we’re now choosing limitation instead of irresponsible growth.”

The ads are set to be rolled out in other EU countries and in the Netherlands.

“You can have several campaigns telling people to stay away, but people are not going to stay away,” Anna argued. “You need to teach people how to behave. If you don’t do that, it is never ever going to change.”

“This is not a zoo,” Anna argued. “Come to the red light district but behave.”