Police wield a big stick over sex workers

While women worldwide, including here in Mauritius, join forces during the 16 Days of Activism (Nov. 25-Dec. 10) to bring attention to the continued violence against women, sex workers in the Jardin de la Compagnie are brutally attacked by the police.

While women worldwide, including here in Mauritius, join forces during the 16 Days of Activism (Nov. 25-Dec. 10) to bring attention to the continued violence against women,  sex workers in the Jardin de la Compagnie are brutally attacked by the police.

Just a couple of days before Nov. 25, the day of  No Violence Against Women, the newspaper Week End ran an article on page 14 on the treatment of sex workers by the very men who should protect law and order in our society.

According to the report, the women were beaten, some left with broken bones, raped and sodomised by those who are the custodians of  peace, law and order in a democratic country.

Excepting or explaining away gender based violence against one group of women because of their lifestyle is a dangerous game.

Sex workers are trapped continuously in a vicious cycle of stigma and discrimination, both because of their occupation and their sex.

These women face endemic discrimination in a system that criminalizes them and not their male clients. Because they are shunned by society, sex workers fall through the loop and never benefit from the laws that are put in place. And now, it is evident that they are brutalized not only by clients, but by the police too.

Poverty, gender inequality and the unequal gender power relations have increasingly made women vulnerable to gender based violence, and sex workers even more so.

Women turn to sex work as the only means to survive and to provide the basic needs for their children. And, many sex workers in Mauritius also turn to drugs to help them withstand the victimization they face daily in their work. They carry the double stigma of being both sex workers and drug addicts.

Mauritius must confront that fact that within the nation that is viewed externally as the ‘tiger of the Indian Ocean’,  there are vulnerable groups who do not receive equal access to health care, social services and protection, thus making them always vulnerable. Laws must be put in place to protect sex workers. Fundamental changes are needed at all levels within the Mauritian society to address the unequal gender power relations which drive women into sex work and keeps them there.

All women should be treated equally before the law. If we allow the police to have one set of rules for a vulnerable group of women in our society, what will stop these rules from being extended in various ways to everyone?

We cannot continue each year to mark the 16 Days of Activism with just a show of goodwill. The Minister of Women’s Rights, Child Development and Family Welfare, Ms Arianne Navarre, must take up police violence against sex workers with her male colleagues to ensure that violent crimes against women, no matter who they are, do not become institutionalized.

The fact that women are brutalized by the police, even while we speak of no violence against women, is a clear sign that some sectors of our society need to be reined in by the government officials and authorities who have control over them.

Loga Virahsawmy is a writer and chairperson of  Mauritius Media Watch.

This article is part of the GEM Opinion and Commentary Service that provides views and perspectives on current events.

janine@genderlinks.org.za for more information