27/06/2013 00:00
TW
0
Joan Collins PROSTITUTION in Majorca makes over 50 million euros a year, a figure which includes the profits of the sectors surrounding the activity, such as night clubs, adverts in newspapers, and websites devoted to prostitution. This makes it the fourth or fifth highest earning sector in the Balearics. This was confirmed yesterday by the Professor of the Education Faculty at the Balearic University (UIB) and coordinator of the report about prostitution in the Balearics, “the sale of people without restriction”, Luis Ballester. His conclusions were presented yesterday in a meeting with representatives of the entities and non governmental organisations who had collaborated in the project, Doctors of the World, the Red Cross, Oblatas, Adoratrices and the Balearic Institute for Women. Ballester revealed that in the Balearics 2'500 women work in prostitution, although only around 900 belong to the “hard core” who offer sexual practices considered to be “high risk” on a daily basis. The rest are not solely prostitutes but do it to “supplement their income”. Some 98 percent of prostitutes in the Balearics are immigrants, and a great many of them are “victims of gangs trafficking in people” although, according to Ballester, the exact figure is “difficult” to determine as very few decide to “report them to the authorities”, as they fear reprisals from the gangs. On the other hand, Ballester warned that banning prostitution would be a threat to tourist areas like the Balearics, where the movement of people is more consistent and it is this “flexibility of movement” that makes it an attractive factor for the “clients”. In this respect he added that the type of prostitution practised in Sweden, which bans soliciting but not the offer of the service, was a clear example of the migration of clients from one country to another, as has happened recently in Catalonia, where an influx of people from France has been noticed, another of the countries where prostitution has been banned.