Event: International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers
Wednesday 17 December 2014
7pm (assemble 6.45pm) candlelit march — from Soho Square to St Anne’s Church.
7.30pm Soho Trot by Ana Aranha. Documentary featuring powerful interviews and true testimonies from sex workers working independently in Soho flats who fought police raids and evictions, St Anne’s Church 55 Dean St.
8pm Speak Out featuring actors Rupert Everett & Sarah Solemani.
One year on from the shocking mass raids in Soho when 250 police in riot gear with dogs stormed women’s flats, sex workers and supporters will:
- celebrate the successful struggle that defeated evictions and closures
- remember and commemorate lives lost in the last year
- report on the campaign to stop further criminalisation
- demand an end to criminalisation, stigma and poverty which makes us vulnerable to all forms of violence and exploitation.
Marianna Popa and Maria Duque-Tunjano and others were murdered this time last year. Many others have lost their lives who have never hit the headlines. Over 200 unsolved murders of women, many of them sex workers, were identified by police Operation Enigma. Rape and other violence are common yet fear of arrest and, if we are immigrant, deportation deter most sex workers from reporting. Some victims have been arrested for prostitution offences while their attackers go free. That’s how serial rapists and murderers are enabled and encouraged.
Organised by: English Collective of Prostitutes “These tears are both a token and a vow of combat.”
Supported by: Sex Worker Open University, Queer Strike, Women Against Rape, x:talk Contact: prostitutescollective.net 020 7482 2496 ecp@prostitutescollective.net