Amsterdam to move sex workers out of city centre
in tourism ‘reset’
Brothel windows in red light district to be closed and
‘erotic centre’ set up elsewhere instead
Daniel
Boffey in Brussels
Mon 1 Feb
2021 15.25 GMT
The brothel
windows of Amsterdam’s red light district will be closed and an “erotic centre”
will be set up away from the city centre, councillors have agreed.
A proposal
from the city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, to shut down a significant number of the
windows in the narrow alleys around the docks was backed by a broad group of
political parties.
The sex
workers in the De Wallen red light district will be invited to move to a
purpose-built centre elsewhere in Amsterdam, the location of which remains to
be determined.
The CDA and
ChristenUnie have long lobbied for the closure of the windows, and they have
now been backed by the VVD, the party of the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte,
as well as the Labour party and the Greens.
“This is
about a reset of Amsterdam as a visitor city,” said Dennis Boutkan, of the
Dutch Labour party. The CDA’s Diederik Boomsma said: “Tourists are welcome to
enjoy the beauty and freedom of the city, but not at any cost. We have to intervene
firmly.”
Halsema had
argued that the brothel windows should be closed as women working in the area
had become a tourist attraction, attracting gawping and abuse.
When the
idea was first proposed, a newly formed lobby group named Red Light United
claimed that 90% of the 170 female sex workers it had surveyed wanted to work
in the windows in the narrow alleys and canalside streets of the Singel and De
Wallen.
One member
of the group, going by the pseudonym Foxxy, told the Het Parool newspaper at the
time: “Relocating those workplaces is not an option because then the customers
will not know where to find the sex workers. Will Halsema also sometimes
organise bus trips for them to the Westelijk Havengebied [a district north of
the city centre]?”
However,
the majority of councillors agreed that the relocation was necessary to change
the type of tourists being attracted to Amsterdam.
A second
proposal to ban tourists from buying cannabis from the city’s cafes is
struggling to win support owing to fears that it will hand over trade to
dealers on the streets.
The parties
in the city’s ruling coalition – the liberal D66 party, the Greens, Labour and
the Socialist party – have voiced serious doubts about the mayor’s plans,
according to Het Parool.
“I fear a
growth in unhealthy drug use among visitors and the impact of street trade on
our young people,” the D66’s Alexander Hammelburg said.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário