Prostitutes in Amsterdam protest as city officials close down their sex-windows

 

Sex workers and their supporters flooded the streets of Amsterdam, in protest against the plans to ‘reinvigorate’ the famous ‘Red Light District’- as the city has decided to close some of the iconic windows, where sex-workers have sat for years to entice clients, foreign and local.

 

Amsterdam is famous for its open-minded, party lifestyle with the legal usage of marijuana and sex work enticing racier travellers and students for decades. The country is worried about what the decision will do to tourism.

Over 100 of the 500 red and pink-lit windows have already been closed in recent years in a bid to stop human-trafficking, however marching sex-workers are shouting “Don’t save us, save our windows” and “Stop closing our windows”.

 

A spokesperson for the prostitutes cited by Dutch press agency ANP said “Sex is a legal career in the Netherlands and we need support, we want to be taken seriously by politicians. We are, nonetheless, being treated like pariahs and kicked out of the neighbourhood without anyone asking our opinion.”

 

The protest has left all the windows empty, with a written sign across them for Amsterdam’s mayor Eberhard van der Laan: “You are stealing our jobs.”