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Indian sex workers make May Day appeal
Indian sex workers make May Day appeal
Wednesday May 02, 2007
Thousands of Indian sex workers took to the streets Tuesday in the Marxist-ruled West Bengal state to press for better working conditions.
Some 5,000 prostitutes joined a torchlight rally to mark May Day in the state capital Kolkata, saying sex workers should be given a different legal status.
"Give us legal status of entertainers," said banners the women carried in the rally, which snaked from Kolkata's largest red light district of Sonagachi to a university campus, witnesses and police said.
Prostitution is illegal in India but the police turn a blind eye to the flourishing trade in impoverished states such as West Bengal.
Rally participants, encouraged by onlookers who whistled and waved, said the sex workers will also crank up a campaign against archaic anti-prostitution laws passed by the British when it ruled India.
"The sex workers will soon launch a campaign across India to press their demands for their recognition as entertainment workers and the abolition of such laws," Swapna Gayen, a rally leader, told AFP.
Fijilive
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