Murders hit Hong Kong's vulnerable 'one-woman brothels'

The back-to-back killings have drawn attention to a peculiarity in Hong Kong law: Prostitution is legal, but brothels are not. As a result, many prostitutes work alone in apartments, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The law also bans others from making money off prostitution — a rule meant to keep out pimps, but which also prevents sex workers from hiring security guards.

“Prostitutes are our city's most vulnerable workers because of the ambiguities,” Hong Kong's leading English language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, said in a recent editorial urging the government to reconsider the laws. “They deserve, and must be allowed to receive, better protection.”

So far, the government has rebuffed such appeals. The laws “strike a reasonable balance between the human rights and privacy of sex workers, the well-being of other members of the community and the prevailing moral values of the community,” the Hong Kong Security Bureau said in a statement.

The debate highlights the role of the sex trade in freewheeling, capitalist Hong Kong, a former British colony now ruled by China. The latest government estimate, in 2001, put the number of prostitutes at 200,000 in this city of seven million.

Prostitution has long been common at night clubs, karaoke bars, massage parlors and hair salons, despite being illegal: The law defines brothels as locations housing two or more prostitutes.

A relatively small but growing number of prostitutes — known as “phoenix sisters” in Chinese — work on their own. The number of one-woman operations has grown five- or six-fold since a decade ago to about 2,500, said Elaine Lam from Zi Teng, an advocacy group for prostitutes.

“Why do people target sex workers? They are isolated. Nobody cares about what happens to them. People also take out their frustrations on sex workers. People think, 'These women are bad women anyway. We can treat them however we like to,'” she said.

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