PARIS: As Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics, undocumented Chinese sex worker Hua says increased police patrols threaten her livelihood.
“I really feel the pressure, I'm scared all the time. There are police checks every day,” said the 55-year-old man, who asked not to be identified.
“That's why I go to work less and less.”
About 40,000 people – the vast majority women – are sold or exploited for sex in France, according to government and charity estimates.
Under French law, the sale of sexual services is allowed, but it is illegal to exploit someone or pay for sex, making pimps and clients criminally liable.
However, it is more difficult if the sex worker is undocumented.
“I'm so afraid of being arrested that I won't be working outside during the Olympics,” added the divorcee, who came to France seven years ago hoping to earn a decent wage as a cleaner. was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“If I'm arrested, I'll be sent back to China and they won't give me medical care there.”
At the office of the charity Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) in the northeast Paris district of Belleville, she broke down in tears.
“I don't understand what we did to anyone?” said the Chinese woman, who says she sometimes sells her services to good customers for as little as 20 euros ($21) because “they don't have money and neither do I.”
In another part of Paris, on a street known for the sex trade, near the city center, Milene Juste was looking for clients.
She said she was most concerned about the new safety rules that restrict pedestrian and vehicle movement in Paris.
“Our regulars won't be able to get in with all the restrictions,” said Just, 50, a sex worker for 22 years.
“And I don't think that the tourists passing by will jump on us. So we are leaving here,” she added.
Ahead of Friday's opening ceremony of the two-week sports fiesta on the banks of the Seine, sex workers like Hua and Juste have all but disappeared from their usual Parisian haunts.
But because most sex services are online these days, the police who fight sexual exploitation are also focusing their efforts on it.
“Customers go to the website, mark the category, price and time,” a police officer specializing in the matter told AFP.
It's like ordering food online, “except with delivery girls,” she said, asking to remain anonymous because of the nature of her work.
Medecins du Monde, which also tries to support sex workers virtually, says it recently saw more than 46,000 ads in one evening on one popular site.
Sex workers have reported tens of thousands of “risky” or “dangerous” clients since 2019 through the charity's Jasmine Project to warn others about them.
The build-up to the Games also coincided with a key ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, which said France's criminalization of sex-worker clients did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling has disappointed some right-wing groups, who argue that France's policy only increases the stigmatization of sex workers.
“Criminalization increases physical assaults, sexual violence, and police brutality against people who sell sex, but has no apparent impact on ending trafficking,” said Erin Kilbride, women's and LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
French authorities expect gangs promoting women from Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay to continue advertising during the Games.
They suggest that elite prostitution may increase with all the wealthy visitors.
But they also remain concerned about the rise in juvenile abuse in recent years, including vulnerable young girls in the state's foster care system.
About 20,000 minors are sexually exploited in France, according to the human rights organization Acting Against the Prostitution of Children.
In May, a court jailed five men for paying for sex with a 12-year-old girl, a rare case of such a case going to trial.
She was pimped after running away from home.
