The police who carried out the swoop on female sex workers in Accra recently, have explained that they did not specifically target women during their operations.

According to them, it is extremely difficult to arrest the male patrons of sex workers to charge them for soliciting for immoral purposes.

The police claim that in many cases when they attempted to arrest the men found in the company of these sex workers, they explained that they had been called by these ladies for reasons they themselves were yet to find out.

The Nima Division Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner Angwubutoge Awuni, said as the law stands now, it only empowers the police to arrest women who are caught publicly in the act of soliciting for immoral purposes (sex), but not to trail and pounce on couples having intimacy indoors.

The Criminal Code of 1960 Section 275 states among other things that any person in any place or site persistently soliciting or importune (to obtain client) for any other immoral purposes shall be guilty of misdemeanour.

Section 276 provides that persons arrested for committing such offence could be fined GH¢50 and upon a second offences the person could be fined or jailed for a period not exceeding three years.
He said the police periodically swoop on criminal elements including women soliciting for immoral purposes as their activities are a nuisance to society.

"What we usually do is that some of our men would dress in mufti and move to popular red light areas like the Togo Embassy, Cantonments Roundabout where these female sex workers stand, flagging down people driving in private vehicles in the evenings."

ACP Awuni said the police in private cars feign interest in the women after which they arrest them.

He said it was quite revealing when during a recent swoop, it was discovered after a search on the sex workers that complimentary cards belonging to some well respected people in the society were in their possession.

ACP Awuni said some of these complimentary cards belong to married men who society holds in high esteem.

"In fact, some of these big men are the very ones who hire the services of lawyers to defend these sex workers in court," he said.
ACP Awuni said the police are constrained to expose the identity of these men since the mere possession of a complimentary card does not mean they have committed a crime.

He sympathised with married women who might fall prey to their husbands who transmit to them sexually transmitted infections such as HIV.

Nana Oye Lithur, a human rights lawyer and gender activist, agreed with the position of the police, saying that the criminal code of 1960 on soliciting for immoral purposes criminalizes only girls who are the people that stand in the street corners soliciting for men, but quickly added that the conduct of the pimps are equally criminal.

She said the law on soliciting for immoral purposes should be reviewed and made gender neutral since it only criminalizes one aspect of the transaction.

Nana Oye Lithur who is also the Executive Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives, wondered why women who are on the streets selling sex should be covered under the law while the men who are buyer are not.

According to her, if the objectives of the law are to deter people from committing the crime, then both the girls who are selling their bodies and the men who are buying their services should be arrested and prosecuted.

She called on the Ghana Law Reform Commission to take steps to review the law which was passed as far back.as 1960 at the time the challenges posed by HIV for instance were not existent.

"There is a need to revisit the decriminalization of sex work since it has various dimensions including poverty profile which informs why some people choose to engage in sex work.


Source: Spectator