Share this story!            

Sex workers in India rally on May Day

KOLKATA: Sex workers in eastern India marked May Day Monday with a rally in the Marxist-ruled state of West Bengal to protest a proposed law that would ban the world's oldest profession.

Around 4,000 sex workers participated in a silent march in the state capital Kolkata, witnesses said. Almost 100,000 people joined a larger May Day rally in the city, according to the organisers, the Centre for Indian Trade Unions.

The women carried flash lights and posters saying “live and let live” and “we demand social justice” and marched through the city's largest red light district of Sonagachi and urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene. Gouri Roy, president of the provincial sex workers' union, the Committee for Indomitable Women, warned of larger protests in the Marxist-ruled state if their appeals fell on deaf ears.

“Sex workers will launch a massive protest across the state if the (Indian) government goes ahead with the amendment of the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act,” she said. India plans to amend existing provisions of act to try to outlaw the flourishing trade, which involves hundreds of thousands of largely impoverished women in the country. afp

Home | Foreign

Share this story!