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there are many illegal practices perpetrated by the police, such as entrapment, assault and rape.298
Another study was conducted in Beijing in 2008-2009 of 348 internal migrant female sex workers. Some were street-based, some were based in entertainment establishments, and some worked at personal services businesses such as hair salons, footbath, sauna, and massage parlors. 62 percent of street-based workers reported that they had been arrested compared to 30 percent of those working from entertainment establishments and 15 percent of workers operating from personal services businesses.299 Zheng describes an incentive-based system whereby police who arrest high numbers of hostesses and collect the most fines receive honours and cash bonuses from their municipal government.300 Zheng describes local corruption as a factor in exploitation of sex workers. Some police demand sexual favours and sex workers face risk of violence: Because the state’s anti-prostitution policy is manipulated and usurped by local officials and bar owners for their own ends leading to a violent working environment for the hostesses, hostesses do not disclose their real identity, which makes it more convenient for men to be violent towards them and even to murder them.301 A Hong Kong based sex worker organization, Zi Teng, alleged patterns of abuse of sex workers by police in mainland China in a report submitted to the UN Committee Against Torture, as follows: Abuse of sex workers is systemic within the police force. This can be explained by the near total discrimination faced by sex workers in China, and not their illegal status. Because of the position sex workers occupy in Chinese society, even the police think nothing of transgressing the law in carrying out abuses against them. Police in Mainland China embark on periodic crackdowns: arbitrary arrest is common as is assault and sometimes the insides of raided properties are vandalized and furniture is removed. As arrests are rarely made at the time of the crime (while the sex worker is providing sexual services for the client), police officers are intent on extracting a guilty plea from the suspects. Torture is commonly manifested as physical assault, and verbal abuse is present in nearly every case. Some officers exploit their dominant position to rape suspected sex workers.302 According to Burris and Xia, the situation is often more complex than it appears and there is a significant difference between the formal written law and actual law enforcement practices: …the commercial sex trade has not been forbidden, but just informally regulated. Police practices are, to some extent, independent of the written laws concerning prostitution. Police generally have the discretion and the dexterity to deploy a wide variety of criminal and public order laws to accomplish their street control and 298 Lingping C. (2011) Research on the impact of 2010 crackdown on sex work and HIV interventions in China, CSWONF. 299 Yi H., Mantell J. et al (2010) op cit., p.176. 300 Zheng T. (2010) Complexity of female sex workers’ collective actions in post-socialist China, In: Demystifying sex work and sex workers: Wagadu 8, 34-68, p.40. 301 Zheng T. (2010) op cit., p.41. 302 Zi Teng (2008), Untitled document (Submission of Zi Teng), p.12, Available at Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/ngos/ ZiTengHongKong41.pdf
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