Prostitution leader rejects zoning, threatens to expose Dominican officials, military

Santo Domingo.- The women’s movement Modemu, ,which groups more than 6,000 sexual workers, Friday demanded more respect from officials business and military leaders, and reiterated its rebuke to the creation of a red light district for them, as the bill pending in Congress stipulates.

Executive director Jaqueline Montero said the organization’s members expect respect from those who use their services, and threatened to revealed the names of senior military officers who have massages parlors which offer sexual services, and of the Government officials which attend them.

She said one of the reasons they reject the red light district is because, according to the bill, they would be under the control of the police, whom she said, are the first rapists of prostitutes, and that they shake them down for their money.

Montero added that the bill would violate their rights because it establishes that all sexual workers will have to bear an ID card, reveal their state of health, which in her view violates HIV-AIDS Law 6593.

Instead the sexual workers’ leader demands that the Government, business leaders and other sectors establish a training center with educative and social programs to benefit that population with other alternatives to make a living.