NEWS AND VIEWS: Europe - for a price (06/25/06)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Europe - for a price

by Andrew Sorokowski

In anticipation of this summer's World Cup, expected to draw some 3 million soccer fans, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) circulated a petition denouncing the German government for collaborating with massive sex trafficking of women. In language that some must have found sensationalistic, an accompanying letter from C-FAM President Austin Ruse predicted that as many as 40,000 women from Eastern Europe and beyond would be lured by criminal organizations promising legitimate employment, then forced into prostitution during the international soccer championship.

Joining the Coalition on Trafficking in Women (CATW), C-FAM called on the participating countries and their teams to publicly oppose Germany's alleged promotion of the sex trade.

In his 2003 book "The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade," Ukrainian Canadian journalist Victor Malarek reports that every year, tens of thousands of women and girls are trafficked into Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Many come from former East Bloc nations. Of the 400,000 women thought to be involved in prostitution in Germany, 75 percent are foreigners. Of these, 80 percent come from Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Moldova, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

But wasn't C-FAM confusing illegal trafficking with legal prostitution? In December 2001 Germany, seeking to de-criminalize an activity which, like the drug trade, many Europeans consider to be victimless, joined the Netherlands in legalizing prostitution. Can Germany be blamed for the activities of foreign criminal organizations? The German authorities have made Herculean efforts to break up the international human trafficking rings drawn to the World Cup. But should they interfere with a woman's right to deal with her body as she wishes? Surely the state should not try to impose old-fashioned morality on the putatively post-Christian populations of East and West. After all, in 2001 Germany stated officially that prostitution was no longer seen as immoral. As long as there is free consent, there is no coercion, and where there is no coercion, there is no injustice.

Besides, some may argue, isn't decriminalization the best approach? Just give foreign prostitutes work visas and special permits as "sex workers," license and regulate the establishments that employ them, and you will put the criminals out of business. Indeed, a guest sex worker program would be a logical way to extend Germany's enlightened policies eastward while drawing East European countries into the global economy. Nations which, like Ukraine, hope to join the European Union, could thus become better integrated with the free market of the liberal West.

The idea may sound far-fetched to Americans, but it reflects a common European view. Mr. Malarek reports that at a trafficking conference in Kyiv in June 2000, a representative from the Dutch Embassy remarked that women outside the European Union had "working skills that could benefit the Netherlands," and proposed special work permits for foreign nationals to engage in prostitution.

This line of argument, however, is based on the fallacy that one can cleanly separate legal prostitution from crime. Non-governmental organizations have found that in Germany, as in the Netherlands, legalization of prostitution has led to increased demand. That demand is met from abroad. And, according to Mr. Malarek, "there is mounting evidence showing a direct correlation between the legalization of prostitution and an increase in victims of trafficking." Meanwhile, as he puts it, "the state effectively becomes another pimp," enriching itself through taxation and increased sex tourism.

No amount of licensing, regulation or bureaucratization can legitimize what is essentially unjust. For all the West's worship of the individual's sacred right to buy and sell, there are certain things that are inalienable. Among them is human dignity, as manifested in the inviolability of the body. The "inalienability" of human dignity means that no one may persuade you to part with it. It also means that however many contracts, waivers or renunciations of rights you sign, you cannot legitimately renounce it. Prostitution - the selling of the use of one's body - is a violation of human dignity akin to slavery. It is intrinsically exploitative. In any country that respects human rights and the rule of law, there can be no genuine consent to prostitution, and therefore no valid agreement for the law to protect.

Germany's $4.5 billion-a-year sex business is no mere exchange of goods and services. It dehumanizes the buyer as well as the seller. Some countries try to distinguish between public solicitation, which they forbid, and private transactions, which they permit. But this distinction does not change the intrinsic nature of the activity. Many Europeans, like many Americans, hold that "you cannot legislate morality." Yet the criminal law of every country is a virtual treatise on morality. Others protest that in matters of private morals, the state must remain neutral. Yet to legalize and regulate a practice formerly condemned and forbidden is surely to take a moral-ethical position.

There is no way around it: the supposedly enlightened policy of legalized prostitution is built upon a lie. And it is no accident that it is inextricably bound up with crime. How, indeed, can one meaningfully distinguish between what is criminal on the one hand, and what is technically legal but still unjust and exploitative on the other? Does a piece of paper make all the difference? You cannot equitably enforce an inequitable law.

The question, then, is not simply whether Germany can abate the trafficking of women during the World Cup. It is whether the notion that the state can legitimize a fundamental injustice under the guise of freedom of contract will be exposed as a moral and intellectual fraud. Only a state that promotes justice within its borders can prevent crime from without.

Among the reasons Ukraine has sought to reaffirm its place in Europe are its tradition of human rights and its venerable Christian civilization. By abandoning the latter, Europe has perverted its understanding of the former. This does not mean, of course, that Ukraine should revert to the Russian "East" - though the European sex trade gives the Russophiles one more emotionally appealing argument. Rather, it suggests that Ukraine should discard its illusions about the West as well as the East, and develop an independent moral and cultural orientation.

To be sure, Ukraine will not sell her soul in order to join a secularized, pseudo-humanist Europe. But will she be persuaded to sell her body?

Andrew Sorokowski is trained as a lawyer and historian. He is employed at the U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. government, but only of the author.

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