Ukraine turns into global sex bazaar

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Ukraine has already turned into a global sex bazaar with thousands of displaced women and girls without any income, food or shelter, which is making a perfect opportunity for pimps to trick or coerce women into prostitution. These pimps are luring the girls and women with “good job offer” or “wealthy husband” in Europe and other countries, while ultimately they are sold to prostitution rings, escort services and porn industry.

According to media reports, Germany, which has a legal sex trade, has long been exposed as a cesspit of abuse, thanks to the feminists who are daring to publicly criticize state-sanctioned pimping. The country has earned its reputation in recent years of being ‘the bordello of Europe’.

There are numerous brothels in Germany that advertise deals where the buyer pays a flat rate for a burger, beer and ‘as many f***s as he can manage’. Researchers on legalized prostitution in Germany heard about the case of a 19-year old, heavily pregnant woman who was hired for a gang-bang in Germany brothel by sex men, four of whom wore horror masks. Once survivor told the researcher that in legal brothels she had been used by 60 men a day.

The idea that ‘sex work’ is good, and trafficking bad ignores the huge amount of evidence of harm in accepting the buying and selling of women’s bodies for men’s one-sided sexual pleasure. This state of affairs leads to the importation of ‘merchandise’ from poorer countries of desperate and disenfranchised women and girls. Claiming that there is no relationship between local sex markets and the international importation of women is akin to saying that domestic homicide has nothing to do with domestic violence and abuse. One leads to the other. In other words, not all prostituted women are trafficked, but trafficking could not exist without prostitution being accepted by governments and citizens alike.

Ukraine is known as one of the hotspots for trafficking in Eastern Europe. It is also host to a vibrant ‘male order bride’ industry, which is basically fulltime prostitution with cooking and cleaning thrown in. Thousands of men travel to Ukraine from North America and Europe looking for Ukrainian brides, having been told that these women are desperate to move to the West to escape poverty and hardship.

There also are cases where some of the women that have since escaped these marriages that it was not uncommon for the men to also pimp their new brides out in the local brothels as well as using them for their own ends.  Stereotypes about Ukrainian women are that they are so desperate to escape that they prefer to be taken overseas to be sexually exploited than to remain in their own country.

Punters in countries that border Ukraine, such as Germany, will be delighted to find ‘fresh meat’ as one sex buyer described Ukrainian women, in the numerous brothels. Turnover is important to the pimps, as it keeps the customer happy. What these men looking for Ukrainian ‘fresh meat’ or virgins are unaware of the fact that a large number of these girls and women are HIV positive and would pose serious health concern to those host nations or prospective customers.

In 2016, Ukraine had a population of 80,100 women sex workers, with 5.2 percent HIV positive. This percentage increased vastly in conflict areas and was estimated to be as high as 38.2 percent in Donetsk. This elucidates the linkage between prostitution and militarization—which as feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe states “are a natural twosome.” Displacement, destruction and deterioration of the economy caused by war, leave many women, without a home or income.

Prostitution is therefore one of the only available means to make a living, especially for working-class women who have often not had access to education. Their precarious situation also heightens the risk of exploitation and trafficking. OHCHR interviews conducted in 2014 reveal how some Ukrainian women were coerced into sex in exchange for money or food. At this moment, there are also reports emerging of criminal gangs targeting Ukrainian female refugees as they flee the horrors caused by the Russian invasion.

Research has suggested that seven out of 10 women are exposed to gender-based violence during conflict. In the case of Ukraine, interviews conducted by the OHCHR, indicate that sexual violence has been used in relation to the conflict in Crimea. Sexual violence makes women more susceptible to contracting HIV given the likelihood that perpetrators has abuse multiple victims without taking protective measures against STDs.

A UNFPA report on gender-based violence in the conflict-affected regions of eastern Ukraine, also confirmed women’s vulnerability to domestic violence increased during conflict. Reasons cited include the normalization of violence culture within society, the wider availability of weapons and the fracturing of communities and loss of support networks.

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