NETHERLANDS: Prostitute windows to be shut down in Amsterdam amid concenrs of criminal activity

One third of Amsterdam's windows used by prostitutes in the city's famous red light district are to close amid concerns over money-laundering, drug-dealing and trafficking in women. About a third of Amsterdam's red-lit windows used by prostitutes will disappear from the city's famous red light district, with the announcement that one of the main brothel owners is set to sell his empire to a real estate company. The housing company is to buy 18 premises, currently featuring 51 windows, for about 25 million euros (35 million U.S. dollars), Amsterdam city council said. Last November the city revoked the trading licences of 33 brothels because they were suspected of criminal activities, including money-laundering, drug dealing and trafficking in women. The brothel owners appealed successfully against the decision. The idea of closing part of the red light district to combat women trafficking is the brainchild of Lodewijk Asscher, a young lawmaker in the city council. "We've heard a lot of information and a lot of instances both of women trafficking and money-laundering in this red light district and we have decided to fight the criminal infrastructure that is in place there," he said for Reuters. Asscher added: "There are pimps tattooing them and women are just transferred as modern slaves from one city to the other, from Hamburg to Amsterdam and Antwerp and I think if we close the market place for those women slaves, that's a good thing." But Mariska Majoors of the Prostitution Information Center, situated in the middle of the city's red light district, thinks it will make the problem worse. "If you want to help out people that are forced to work in the sex industry, the most stupid thing you can do then is to close down their legal and safe working places and make them work underground, where nobody can find them, where nobody is able to help them," she said. The 700-year-old district encompasses a maze of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, prostitutes behind windows and marijuana-selling "coffee shops". Tourist authorities acknowledge the area is as much of a draw as other attractions such as the Van Gogh museum or the Anne Frank House.

ITN Source | October 11, 2007

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