LOS ANGELES—In Germany, where professional sex work has been legal—albeit heavily regulated—for almost 20 years, sex workers now find themselves effectively criminalized again due to a ban on their activities due to COVID-19 health restrictions. But in Hamburg, about 400 sex workers and licensed brothel operators staged a demonstration to demand that they be allowed to resume their jobs.
Germany has been one of Europe’s top coronavirus success stories, holding deaths to a rate of just 112 per million residents, compared to 557 in the United States, 610 in the United Kingdom, and 620 in Spain.
But while the country has reopened large sectors of its economy, including such close-contact businesses as hair salons and massage therapy clinics, the legal sex work trade has remained banned.
Sex workers in Berlin also staged a protest last month outside the Bundesrat (the upper house of Germany’s parliament). Advocates for the sex work community told National Public Radio in the U.S. that in order simply to survive, sex workers have taken to the streets, where they face conditions far more dangerous than in the legal brothels.
"If they work now, they work in worse conditions because they can't do it officially," Alina Prophet, a social worker who staffs a city-funded clinic for sex workers in Hamburg, told NPR. "They can't call the police afterwards, if something bad happens to them."
Sex work is estimated to be an $18 billion per year industry in Germany, with roughly 500,000 sex workers practicing their trade in the country.
But that has all dried up since March, when sex work was shut down along with many other businesses as Germany attempted to curtail the coronavirus pandemic.
Hamburg’s Ministry of Social and Health Issues, which oversees legal sex work in the city, cites ongoing health risks for the continued restrictions.
"If we only had one single case among sex workers, it could potentially, during one day, reach more than 60 other people who would then spread it themselves," Ministry spokesperson Martin Helfrich told NPR.
At the same time, according to the NPR report, Hamburg has issued economic relief payments to legally registered sex workers in the city — but has also levied stiff fines on those who have been caught violating the sex work ban. “Streetwalking” sex work has never been legalized in Germany, where the profession is confined to government-regulated brothels.
Sex worker advocates say that with a detailed set of protocols, sex work can be carried out safely in the pandemic.
“In Switzerland, prostitution has been permitted again for four weeks now and there have been no corona cases in connection with brothel visits there since then,” Association of Sex Workers spokesperson Johanna Weber said, quoted by The Saxon news site.
Photo By Hubert Pelikan / Pixabay
