Buying Sex is Not a Sport

Here's something close to our hearts:

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) is launching a campaign against sport/sex tourism in Germany during the World Cup Football Games, 2006. It is called “Buying Sex is Not a Sport: No to Germany’s Prostitution of Women during the World Cup Games.” Please sign on to the CATW International Campaign and forward it to networks, organisations, political representatives and individuals for their action and signatures.

Here's some of the text of the petition:

From June 9 - July 9, 2006, 12 German cities will host the World Cup Games. Approximately 3 million football fans – mostly men – will attend. It is estimated that 40,000 women will be “imported” from Central and Eastern Europe into Germany to “sexually service” the men.

Germany legalized pimping and the sex industry in 2002. However, it is predicted that the legal red light districts will be too small for the thousands of sport/sex tourists in attendance. In preparation for this influx, the German sex industry has erected a massive prostitution complex for the “booming business” expected during the games.

“Football and sex belong together,” claimed the lawyer of the newly opened 3,000 meter mega brothel in Berlin, built next to the main World Cup venue to accommodate 650 male clients. Wooden “sex huts” called “performance boxes” that look like toilets have been built in fenced-in areas the size of a football field, with condoms, showers and parking for the buyers and a special focus on protecting their “anonymity.”

Buying sex is not a sport. It is sexual exploitation in which women are physically and psychologically harmed, and women’s bodies are treated as commodities to be bought and sold.

Treating women’s bodies as sexual commodities violates international standards of sport that promote equality, mutual respect and non-discrimination. FIFA President J.S. Blatter, “acknowledges the prominent role of sport, and especially football, as a vehicle for delivering clear and firm messages to eradicate the huge blights undermining society around the world." How will the World Cup Games help eradicate the blight of trafficking and sexual exploitation?

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