The lives of sex workers in Kyrgyzstan

Just read through a magazine prepared by sex workers who came in December from different regions of Kyrgyzstan. Very simple language and design. Their stories touched me. The text of the magazine will be uploaded to this blog because the site where the journal was is in reconstruction.

I translated some of the shared stories which are real-life situations:

 1. A young woman survived a group rape, she turned to police and her complaint was registered. There was no investigation because the rape was committed in a district where sex workers work.

2.  A client instead of paying with a service for sex, brought a transsexual woman to a faraway district, beat and robbed. Because the woman was transsexual, she was scared to turn to the police as they treated her harshly before.

3.  The police searched a woman’s bag and found five condoms in it, the woman was detained on the grounds of ‘prostitution’

In Kyrgyzstan sex workers find police as the major source of their troubles. The police detain them, blackmail them, take bribes and organize so-called ’saturday work days’ (subbotniki) 2-3 times a month when the sex workers have to perform sexual services to the police for free.

NGO ‘Tais Plus’ which sees as its main goal empowering sex workers to achieve better conditions for them, has been working with sex workers since 1997. Their main principles are human approach, empowerment, self-governance and maximum independence.