“In the past, I could still shame the cops who were trying to extort from me. I would ask if they were proud of themselves for taking the money for my child’s milk”, explained Maria, a sex worker in Metro Manila, when asked to describe the shift in her relationship with the police. “I would taunt them for being too cowardly to go after the real criminals instead of us helpless women. Some of them would leave us alone after. But things have changed now. We do not fight back. We are too scared.”
President Rodrigo Duterte, who was elected in 2016 by a large margin, ran on a platform of saving the Philippines from a “drug crisis”. Since then he has effectively encouraged the police to aggressively pursue and even murder suspected drug users and sellers. Most of the people who were killed without trial, at least 5000 based on the police’s own estimates, have been from low-income communities. These deaths have been widely documented and criticised. They are not, however, the only negative consequence of Duterte’s policy. Sex workers have also been disproportionately harmed by the campaign because the drug war has increased their pre-existing precarity in Philippine society.
Precarity by law
The confusing mix of laws that regulate prostitution in the Philippines makes sex workers vulnerable to abuse. The Revised Penal Code, enacted in 1930, treats women who sell sex as criminals who should be fined or imprisoned. This is partially contradicted by the Philippines’ 2003 anti-trafficking law, which defines taking advantage of the vulnerability of a person for the purpose of exploitation, including for prostitution, as trafficking. It also runs up against the 2010 Magna Carta of Women, which names prostitution as an act of violence against women from which they should be protected.
