If Paris is beige Amsterdam is red, brick
red to be exact. It’s a compact city, really quite charming in many ways,
a city of museums and canals, the city of Van
Gogh and Rembrandt.
I was there a couple of years ago, walking everywhere
because it’s possible to walk everywhere, all the attractions being within a
reasonably close distance of one another. It was pleasant to give way to the
city’s easy charm, at least by day, because it is charming by day. The
night is different; the night is darker; the night is a deeper shade of red.
We stayed in the Grand, once a medieval convent and then the
city hall and now a hotel. It’s a step or two from Dam Square , right in the centre of the
city. It’s also a step or two from the Red Light district, another tone altogether.
Is there anything quite as sad as desire? Is there
anything as sad as women for rent and the men who are drawn to them? I
hate clichés. I really do not want to say that the prostitutes appear in
a state of undress like slabs of meat in a butcher’s window, but that’s exactly
how they seemed to me. It was one of the most depressing things I have
ever seen.
Amsterdam's legalised window brothels have been in existence
for over ten years now. It’s such a part of the city scene that groups of
tourists - not potential clients - are taken on walking tours to see the
sights. Thomas Cook, the company originally founded to promote ‘ethical
and educational’ tourism, has since 2005 led excursion through the area,
delightful jaunts advertised as “free to children under three.”
Personally I found walking through the area really quite
threatening in the dark. I’m glad I was not alone. It’s difficult
to pinpoint but I just felt a general air of menace, not helped by the groups
of men of Eastern European and Middle Eastern appearance milling around by the
canal bridges.
It was all meant to be different; it was meant to divorce
prostitution from pimps. It hasn’t. The whole thing has been a failure.
Rather than discouraging criminality it has allowed it to flourish under an
uncomprehending official eye. Now the councillors of De Wallen, the
district where most of the brothels are located, worried about the community’s
reputation, have decided on a cleanup.
The problem is the loverboys, not the sad cases who come for
sad sex, but the traffickers, mostly of Asian descent, who lure women into
prostitution and then keep them there, locked in emotionally and financially if
not physically. According to an article I read in the October issue of
the political journal Standpoint (Window brothels get the red light), their
victims are put to work in windows so that they can be kept under constant
watch, surveyed by tourists, ogled by punters, monitored by pimps.
Migration from outside Europe
has made the problem worse. A large number of these women have been
trafficked illegally to begin with. Once caught in the game they have no
choice but to play the game. Reporting abuse to the authorities might easily
result in eventual deportation.
I use the word ‘pimp’ but officially there are no
‘pimps.’ After all, the whole sordid business is just a business.
Instead of pimps there are ‘managers’ or ‘facilitators.’ I expect it was
the ‘managers’ and ‘facilitators’ I saw in friendly groups by night, one of
whom attempted to accost me. As I say, I’m glad I was not alone.
“People are starting to hear that our system has a lot of
crime and violence against the working girls linked to it”, said one of the
beat policemen in the area, “The trafficking problem and the Turkish loverboys,
they are all coming to the surface now. Really we have allowed it by
being too adventurous with allowing prostitution to be such an attraction in
our city.”
Here
is a case where Liberality has had exactly the same effect as Prohibition: in
tackling one set of problems it has engendered others, worse in ever
degree. Human trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering are all
in place. I bet that’s something not touched upon on the delightful meat
tours, free to under threes.
The boy has put his finger in the dyke. To prevent a
continuing flood of filth The Prostitution Framework Act will come into force
in the New Year. This includes a requirement that all of the working
girls register with the authorities. It also raises the minimum age for
prostitution from eighteen to twenty-one. Will it work? It seems
doubtful. It seems more likely that the underage girls and the illegal
immigrants will sink ever deeper into the dark of the Amsterdam night, shepherded away by the
loverboys to even sadder levels of degradation.
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