I ended yesterday’s column with the recent statement by the President of the German Bundestag, Julia Klockner, that with the legalisation of prostitution since 2002, “Germany has become the brothel of Europe.” She called for a ban on prostitution and the purchase of sex, thus reigniting the debate at the European level on the need to adopt the “Nordic model” of dealing with prostitution and human trafficking, by criminalising and punishing male “buyers” of sex and not prostituted women. It is known that in countries such as Sweden and Norway, these women are supported by the state to leave the sex industry, because female sexuality is not considered … a commodity to be bought and sold.
Julia Kloeckner’s position was immediately supported by Germany’s Health Minister, Nina Varken, who stressed in an interview that “Germany, like other countries, needs a law that criminalises the purchase of sexual content, while prostituted women receive comprehensive help to leave prostitution.” Another serious aspect of the sexual exploitation of women through prostitution is, of course, the action of organised crime, which is an integral part of it.
I would like to remind you that in yesterday’s text I had hosted a note by the lawyer Dr. Maria Kyprianou, author of the book entitled “The Regulation of Prostitution in Cyprus”, where she describes the “fragmentary regulation” of prostitution in our country, noting that in Cyprus “prostitution is not in itself a criminal offense, except for foreign women, but living off the profits of prostitution and maintaining a brothel are criminal offenses”.
Despina Mertakka, then an official of the Office of the Commissioner for Administration, described it in her own words in a public debate a few years ago: “Cyprus refuses to clarify what prostitution means. Do we want it as a profession and will we legalise it, or do we not want it and do not accept it as a society and will we criminalise it? Prostitution is not a criminal offense in Cyprus, because we need the prostitute for men to let loose. We have accepted that the prostitute performs a … social function in Cyprus. So, we do not touch the system and this issue is still a gray area in Cyprus… When the trafficker traffics women, his own benefit is the profit. The customer of the prostitution market is the one who maintains the ring. The trafficker has no reason to continue trafficking if he has nowhere to sell. The customer is the problem, he increases the demand, he maintains it, perpetuates it and provides it”…
