Sex worker rights groups SWEAT, Sisonke and the Women’s Legal Center have come together to publish a groundbreaking report (WLC Stop Harassing Us Report) on police violence against sex workers in South Africa.
The report, entitled “Stop Harassing Us! Tackle Real Crime!” documents concrete cases of police abuse of sex workers. The report includes first hand testimony by sex workers about incidents when police have beaten, gang raped, and otherwise assaulted them. It implicates police in the use of pepper spray and rubber bullets during the arrest of sex workers.
The research, based on information from more than 300 sex workers in Cape Town, Johannesburg and other parts of South Africa, found that police perpetrators of unlawful acts of abuse mostly go unpunished because often sex workers are afraid to report police crimes and, when they do, fellow law enforcement officers or prosecutors often refuse to investigate complaints or open cases against police.
Police violence against sex workers also contributes to sex workers’ reluctance to report crimes by fellow citizens, including acts of sexual assault and other forms of violence by clients. The report found: “There is great skepticism about the police as a mechanism for protection or redress, especially in light of the fact that some police officers are themselves perpetrators of these very crimes.”
The report’s authors conclude that the criminal status of sex workers increases their vulnerability to violence and directly results in the type of abuses they are experiencing. They call for the repeal of laws that criminalize sex work and for civil society and international human rights institutions to support the decriminalization of sex work in South Africa.
The report calls on the government of South Africa to immediately address the problem of human rights abuses against sex workers. The authors specifically call on the government to issue orders to police to stop harassing sex workers and to enforce compliance with an interdict issued by the country’s High Court in 2009, which prohibits the arbitrary arrest of sex workers.
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