NETHERLANDS: The first ever open day in 800 years of Amsterdam's red light district.

Record ID: 421726

  • Title: NETHERLANDS: The first ever open day in 800 years of Amsterdam's red light district.
  • Date: 21st February 2006
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF DANCER PERFORMING IN CASA ROSA CLUB
  • Embargoed: 8th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Netherlands
  • Country: Netherlands
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVA97RG7EVIHTGSD2WORTIWOZTLE
  • Story Text: Amsterdam's famed red light district held its first ever "open day" on Saturday (February 18) as its peep-shows and brothels gave crowds of wide-eyed visitors free entry to help shed the area's increasingly negative reputation.
    Armed with a list of 25 establishments opening their doors and flinging back their red curtains, hundreds of tourists and locals seized the opportunity to see a prostitute's bedroom, watch a brief live peep-show or chat to a lap dancer.
    Harrowing reports of forced prostitution and human trafficking have caused a public outcry in recent months and even prompted calls from councillors for the 800-year-old red light district to be shut down, to the fury of many sex workers.
    Stories of petty crime and gang violence also dominate.
    "The open day is because we want to promote the Red Light District, but also because we want to change the image. We think the image is too bad, too negative, so we want to give people a more honest view of this neighbourhood," said organiser Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs an information centre on the district.
    Many of the area's sex workers also took the chance to explain more about their work and dispel myths.
    Candy, a 39-year-old dancer from France, sat in her usual position behind the counter of the Banana Bar, joking with visitors and posing for photographs.
    "I think it's good. Because then people are going to think a little different of how it is. Because they have a different kind of opinion, but it's just fun, it's nice, it's entertainment, I think it's good, really," she said.
    Prostitution has been fully legal in the Netherlands since 2000, and sex workers are self-employed and subject to tax.
    However one rights group estimates that around 3,500 women are trafficked to the Netherlands each year from eastern Europe and Asia to work in secret brothels or illegal escort agencies, where they are often held captive and abused.
    There may have been less flesh on display than usual for the non-paying public, but visitors, mostly drawn by curiosity, didn't seem to mind.
    One visitor, Inneke, sat in a prostitute's chair in a shop window. "It feels good, really. I can wave to people, I watch them, they watch me, quite nice," she said.
    Tourist authorities admit the district -- a clutch of narrow alleys and canals lined with sex shops, brothels and neon signs -- is as big an attraction as Amsterdam's museums and coffee shops, where marijuana is freely smoked and sold.
    Every night visitors throng the streets, watching scantily clad women sitting behind huge red-lit windows, but only a fraction dare to venture inside.
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