Sex workers and their allies gathered on Gadigal land in Belmore Park on October 28 to protest the Australian Border Force (ABF) and various Australia-wide police being given permission to raid brothels.
, the national peak sex worker organisation, hosted the .
Speakers outlined that have involved armed state or federal police officers storming rooms, cancelling visas on the spot and throwing workers into immigration detention.
Speakers included the Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group (AMSWAG), an offshoot of Scarlett Alliance that has been prominently campaigning against this crackdown.
was set up to crack down on the suggested exploitation of the temporary visa system and . The ABF can turn away a foreign national if it suspects they arrived to conduct sex work illegally. This is the justification for government raids on brothels.
In reality, dozens of young Asian women are being turned away at airports and traumatised by the ABF’s execution of a warrant at their place of work.
The sex worker representatives who addressed the rally warned these operations have been emboldened by the .
There have been 18 raids on brothels in Naarm/Melbourne this year. Since the August 31 , AFB raids are taking place each week.
AMSWAG spokesperson Damien said the rally was demanding: an end to racially targeted compliance operations and workplace raids; to establish a fair visa pathway for migrant workers; end racial profiling at the border and; close offshore detention centres and allow people awaiting visa outcomes to live safely in the community.
spoke to sex workers from NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory, where the work has been decriminalised.
Spreading fear
SWOP NSW outreach worker Amelie described the raids in NSW. NSW Police arrive and “forcefully” burst through doors “spreading fear”. In Victoria and the Northern Territory, immigration has also detained and deported people.
“Raids make workers afraid to open the door to outreach to seek healthcare and to call for help when violence happens,” another SWOP NSW outreach worker said. “We refuse to let NSW become another Victoria. We refuse to let fear replace safety. We refuse to let raids silence our community.”
Amelie said authorities pretend that their raids are about worker safety but brothels and massage parlours now operate in a state of fear.
Scarlet Alliance migrant policy analyst Aysha Zaharin said had written to the Home Affairs Department in May last year, asking for Operation Inglenook’s operational guidelines. The query was forwarded to the ABF, which on December 24, promised to review its operations, but failed to reply.
In March, Victorian sex worker organisation asked Home Affairs why ABF is raiding workplaces when sex work has been decriminalised. The ABF replied that the raids were “normal”, adding that Operation Inglenook was ended on December 31 last year.
ABF suggested obtaining its guidelines via freedom of information. The sex workers went to Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who assisted them via federal parliament.
Scarlett Alliance migrant policy analyst Aysha Zaharin outlined that Border Force had conducted more than 200 activities targeting sex workers in workplaces since 2022, detaining and deporting at least 30 people.
Inglenook has led to more than 200 people being turned back on arrival in Australia, on suspicion of having arrived in the country to conduct sex work.
Zaharin said when people are refused entry, they are held in immigration detention, on average, for a week.
In its first 12 months, Inglenook detained 98 migrants, 88% of whom were women, 59% were 29 years old or younger and 53% were from Japan.
In its second year 169 people were deported: 93% were women, 73% were under 29 and 52% were from Japan.
Detailed in Villawood
AMSWAG was involved in an attempt to secure the release of four Asian trans women, who were being held in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in October last year. They were being held in the male section of the facility. Campaigners .
Zaharin said what became clear is that young Asian women are being “seriously profiled” and targeted. Women from America or Europe are not. It means that “trans women sex workers are being held in the male detention facility, being denied gender-affirming healthcare, subjected to sexual harassment and having their human rights denied”.
Bee Charika, spokesperson for Victorian peer sex worker organisation Vixen, said it is running a Rising Red Lantern campaign to raise awareness about the proliferation of raids under Inglenook. She said there had been one brothel raid a week, .
“We are here to name the violence … of the legal and court system, where we are treated as less valuable than others,” Charika said. Since January, there have been at least 18 raids in Victoria, with 11 workers having had their visas cancelled on the spot.
“We are also deeply concerned that, during August and September, after anti-immigration protests … we saw the rate of raids increase.”
Amnesty International and other rights organisations say that decriminalising sex work is the best way of upholding sex worker rights and helping maintain workers’ health.
New South Wales in 1995. The Northern Territory passed decriminalisation laws in 2019, . and and took effect in August last year.
Another critical issue in NSW is that, despite a long campaign, . Last year’s omnibus equality bill initially contained such protections, but Labor dropped them.
[Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers where .]