Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 15, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
My September 13, 2006 column was titled “Magistrate Gilhuys and the stripteasers.”
This is what I wrote in that article ten years ago “Magistrate Gilhuys has remanded five striptease workers from Brazil who ply their trade in Guyana to prison instead of granting them bail. The hard-pressed police of course, instead of solving crimes, chose to run into a Brazilian nightclub and arrest the women. Their only crime was that they were making a living. I would like to know who is the police officer that authorized that raid. Should I ever meet with him, I would ask him is that is the way he intends to use the precious time of the Guyana Police Force.” (end of quote)
At the time of writing, I was told that the lady workers that were arrested in the swoop of Minister Broomes in Bartica and who pleaded guilty and were fined for illegal residency are still in the remand. This reminds us of the Nepalese who pleaded guilty to illegal entry, were fined, paid the money but spent months in jail on the order of the magistrate until the state could find money to deport them. It was a businessman who sought the court intervention and freed them
If this is the exact situation with these Bartica women then it is nonsense. Minister Broomes, who caused them to be in front of the courts has a moral responsibility to see that these workers from Bartica are not incarcerated in humiliatingly deplorable situations like the Nepalese. Women groups and human rights organizations must act immediately to seek court intervention.
These groups should seek out a lawyer and file the court papers as early as possible. If we cannot get a sympathetic lawyer, I am willing to contribute financially. I read the letter by three women activists, Andaiye, Dr. Allisa Trotz and Karen De Sousa and a relevant part of that correspondence is reproduced.
It went like this; “It is significant that the sex workers coalition representative said that based on the reports coming out so far, this is an attack on prostitutes as opposed to addressing trafficking. One would expect that those who have made the difficult choice to enter into sex work as a living – a decision that must be respected – would help the authorities to identify persons who are being held against their will or deceived into entering into prostitution. But if what the state is doing is persecuting prostitutes – and this is what reports of the recent raid look like, from picking up some 20 odd women, charging about half for being in Guyana illegally, carrying photos of the women as if they are criminals to be shamed and blamed – then all this will do is send sex workers underground where they will face even more unsafe conditions of work.” (end of quote)
Philosophically I am not opposed to homosexuality and to sex workers (whether male or female; I would like to see a non-religious, sociological arguments against it). A woman chooses to have sex in exchange for money in circumstances that are private then that is the realm of the personal that should not involve society’s intrusion. Of course it is a different situation if a lady of the night is soliciting men at a street corner and she is in puris naturalibis. Then that is public indecency. But nowhere in the world prostitutes behave like this.
No one could argue with Minster Broomes in her quest to rid Guyana of trafficking in person. I have a feeling that the law needs to look into some Chinese workers here in Guyana. But the Bartica raid ended up charging sex workers. This is why the question posed by the three women activists is trenchantly relevant – what was the purpose of the raid if only sex workers were prosecuted (and in this case persecuted)
If on paying the fine, the women are released then they should apply for extension of their stay in Guyana. Guyana is one of the most land available countries in the world that could take in a few hundred thousands. Maybe a good million or more. Why would the Ministry of Citizenship deny the extension?
One of the persistent jokes I had to endure during the election campaign came from Michael Carrington and Leon Hunt from the AFC who were assigned to Bartica (Bartica was won by the APNU-AFC coalition). Carrington and Hunt jokingly for weeks insisted I go with them to see the nice women from Latin America that Bartica has. Carrington and Hunt never mentioned anything about prostitution. They talked about beautiful women. Leave the beauties in Bartica, Ms. Broomes!
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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