PARIS: As Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics, undocumented Chinese sex worker Hua says increased police patrols threaten her livelihood.
“I feel really under pressure, I'm constantly afraid. Every day there are police checks,” said the 55-year-old, who used a different name to avoid being recognized.
“So I go out less and less to work.”
Around 40,000 people – the overwhelming majority women – are sold or exploited for sex in France, according to government and charity estimates.
Under French law, it is legal to sell sex, but it is illegal to exploit someone or pay for sex, placing criminal responsibility on pimps and clients.
However, it is more complicated if the sex worker is undocumented.
“I'm so afraid I'll be arrested that I won't work on the streets during the Olympics,” added the divorcee, who came to France seven years ago hoping to earn a decent wage as a cleaner, and has been diagnosed breast cancer.
“If they arrest me, I will be sent back to China and they will not give me medical care over there.”
Inside an office of the Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) charity in the northeastern Paris district of Belleville, she broke down in tears.
“I don't understand, what have we ever done to anyone?” said the Chinese woman, who says she sometimes sells her services to nicer customers for just 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, Mylene Juste was looking for customers.
She said she was most bothered by new safety rules restricting pedestrian and traffic movements around Paris.
“Our regulars will not be able to cope with all the restrictions in place,” said Juste, 50, a sex worker for 22 years.
“And I don't think the tourists walking by will jump on us. So we're leaving here,” she added.
Ahead of the opening ceremony along the River Seine for the fortnight-long sports festival that took place on Friday, sex workers like Hua and Juste all but disappeared from their usual haunts in Paris.
But with most sex trafficking online these days, police fighting sexual exploitation are also focusing their efforts there.
“Customers go to a website, mark a category, price and time,” a police officer specializing in the issue told AFP.
It's like ordering food online, “except it's girls” delivering, she said, asking to remain anonymous because of her job.
Medecins du Monde, which also seeks to support sex workers virtually, says it recently saw more than 46,000 ads in a single night on a popular website.
Through the charity's Jasmine Project, since 2019 sex workers have reported tens of thousands of “risky” or “dangerous” clients in a bid to warn others about them.
The build-up to the Games also coincided with a landmark ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued on Thursday, which said France's criminalization of sex worker clients did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling disappointed some right-wing groups who argue that France's policy only increases the stigmatization of sex workers.
“Criminalization increases physical attacks, sexual violence, and police abuse against people who sell sex, while having no demonstrable effect on the eradication of human 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 speculate that high-end prostitution may be on the rise with all the expected wealthy visitors.
But they also remain concerned about an increase in the number of minors being abused in recent years, including vulnerable young girls from the state care system.
About 20,000 minors are sexually exploited in France, according to the rights group Acting Against the Prostitution of Children.
A court in May jailed five men for paying for sexual acts with a 12-year-old girl, in a rare instance of such a case going to trial.
She was pimped after she ran away from home.
