Another avoidance strategy is to run karaoke and offer girls only as entertainment or companionship. The girls then take guests to an hourly hotel in the same building and pay for the room separately. Informal and individual prostitution (mainly Filipinos, Indonesians, Thais and sometimes women from Latin America and the former Soviet Union) is almost always available in nightclubs or hotel bars, especially in the Tsim Sha Tsui and Wan Chai neighborhoods (the latter being famous for serving as the setting for The World of Suzie Wong). Sometimes police raid Triad-run prostitution centres, but usually arrests are made only for immigration offences. [49] These single-woman brothels have a name in Cantonese that translates to “one room, one phoenix.” The name comes from a famous prostitute nicknamed Phoenix. The practice is perfectly legal in theory, but how often is it a masquerade, a pretext for pimps and mamasans (pimps) to control 18 floors of “phoenix women” in the ever-occupied Causeway Bay? Unlike other places in Asia where prostitution is illegal, here in Hong Kong`s red-light districts it`s perfectly legal, but you just have to make sure it`s not organized prostitution, like public advertising and getting someone into prostitution. The most visible public places for sex workers in Hong Kong, especially tourists, are massage parlors and so-called “Japanese-style nightclubs”. However, most of the sex industry consists of women working in small, usually one-bedroom flats, usually referred to as “a woman`s brothels”, the equivalent of the “walk-in brothel” in the UK. They advertise to customers via the Internet and local classifieds. Most popular mainstream newspapers will publish such classified ads with brothel guides as a supplement in the race guides. Yellow neon advertising boxes were used to advertise sexual services to such an extent that “yellow” (黃) became synonymous with prostitution. [ref. needed] “The main objectives of police law enforcement measures are to prevent the exploitation of prostitutes, combat organized prostitution activities and minimize public harassment,” the spokesperson said via email.
“Internal guidelines require officers with the rank of Chief Superintendent to closely monitor any operation involving police officers to ensure that the tactics used to gather evidence (including the level of physical contact with sex workers) are strictly necessary and proportionate to the purpose of the operation.” The pervasiveness of prostitution in Hong Kong is the result of its legality under the “one woman, one room” rule, meaning there can be no brothels or pimps – literally one woman and one room. There are countless ways to circumvent the laws, from massage facilities with unadvertised services to bars where volunteer employees tend to have fluid roles, to say the least. Prostitution organized in the form of directing “at another person for the purpose of. prostitution of that person” is prohibited under section 130, and an offence carries a prison sentence of 14 years. [54] §§ 131 and 137, which are aimed at pimps, provide for a seven-year prison sentence as the maximum penalty for “placing another person as a prostitute” and “subsistence derived from the proceeds of the prostitution of others.” [55] Under Hong Kong law, it is also illegal to arrange sex agreements for more than one woman; Violations are punishable by a fine of HK$20,000 and seven years in prison. [41] For example, if two women are found serving clients in the same apartment, it is an illegal brothel. This is how the so-called “brothel of a woman” is created, in which a woman receives customers in her apartment. It is the most common form of legal prostitution in Hong Kong.
[42] The law prohibits prostitution of girls under the age of 16 for vaginal sex, those under 21 for intercourse, and boys under the age of 21 for gross indecency (嚴重猥褻). [56] Eden Ministry, a non-profit organization that fights human trafficking in Asia, has determined that Hong Kong is both a transit point and a destination for sex work. This is not to say that every person who comes to Hong Kong to prostitute themselves is forced or forced into prostitution, but that human trafficking remains a very real problem in the SAR. Take the example of a case last year in which the victim of human trafficking was beaten and forced to work without pay. The South China Morning Post`s articles on the building mentioned the occasional arrest of an owner who has lived off the avails of prostitution over the years, but the overall tone is consistent with the perceived legality of the establishment. Lee says sex workers regularly seem to prefer working with the Triads — a Hong Kong crime syndicate, though they are often involved in perfectly legal business operations — rather than with the police. “If they`re associated with a triad and a customer doesn`t pay them or mistreat them in any way, the triad will really do something if the police aren`t allowed to do that, and if they`re here illegally, they don`t risk being deported.” 5. Prostitution is legal in Hong Kong, so human trafficking is not a problem. One-woman brothels refer to sex workers who work independently, are not part of an organized brothel, and do not have to pay a pimp or “mamasan” a reduction in their income. Prostitution is indeed legal in Hong Kong, as long as no one other than the sex worker he or she is earns money from paid sex work. In recent years, prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Russia have also come to Hong Kong.
[11] False contracts, often for domestic services, facilitate human trafficking in Hong Kong, where large numbers of Eastern European women are also trafficked for prostitution. [46] Well, just like in other cities in China, prostitution is also endemic here in Hong Kong, so it is certainly inevitable to find a number of foreigners who want to visit the island to look for sexy and hot Hong Kongers or prostitutes. To prevent the spread of STIs, the authorities introduced Hong Kong Ordinance No. 12 in 1857. This required that all brothels be registered and that detainees undergo regular health checks. [2] The 1865 and 1866 censuses recorded 81 and 134 “Chinese brothel owners” respectively. [3] The Colonial Surgeon`s 1874 annual report stated that there were “123 licensed Chinese brothels with 1,358 prostitutes.” [4] From 1879 to 1932, prostitution was legal and regulated, and prostitutes had to register for licenses, pay taxes, and undergo regular health checks. [5] [6] Prostitution exploded in Sai Ying Pun, Wan Chai,[7] Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei districts. In 1930, Hong Kong, with 840,000 inhabitants,[8] had 200 legal brothels with more than 7,000 licensed prostitutes. [9] But in 1932, the Hong Kong government banned prostitution, and three years later, licensed prostitution ended.
Since then, prostitution has been allowed within narrow limits, while a range of prostitution-related activities have been banned, such as courting sex and living on “immoral income” (working as a pimp). [10] It has also attracted prostitutes from other countries. Most of them came from Southeast Asia and even from Europe and the United States. [11] Another area of concern is the enforcement of sex work laws. A 2016 Amnesty International report criticizing Hong Kong`s law states that “the police have a mandate to reduce or eradicate sex work” through laws condemning advertising, “living off the avails of prostitution” and running a “vice establishment.” While Monica has an easier time than many other sex workers on the mainland – marrying a man from Hong Kong allowed her to have an ID card – sex workers from China are often not allowed to work in the city. The Wiki Sex Guide website, which attracts about 3 million visitors a month, describes the Fuji building as “completely legal.” Brockstar of Single Man`s Paradise gives his own insipid comment about the building: “In short, you have over 100 whores in a building and it`s completely LEGAL!” Although organized prostitution is illegal, the industry has always been influenced by triads to recruit economically disadvantaged women who would otherwise never voluntarily enter the profession. Until the 1980s, most underground sex facilities in Hong Kong were run by gangsters. [12] In the 1990s, however, there was a massive change in the form of prostitution in Hong Kong. There was an influx of “northern girls” (Chinese: 北姑) from mainland China who worked illegally as prostitutes in Hong Kong on their short tourist visas; [13] The number of local volunteer prostitutes has also increased dramatically.
As a result, gangsters could no longer make a profit through coercion and their power of control diminished. [12] These laws may have been designed to protect sex workers, but their negative effects have made them obsolete, according to Zi Teng, a leading human rights group for sex workers in Hong Kong.
