Prostitutes take to streets in protest over soliciting ban

About 500 prostitutes and their supporters marched through Paris yesterday – many of them masked – to protest against plans to make street-walking illegal in France.

The women, mostly from the capital, chanted songs that criticised the Interior Minister, Nicola Sarkozy, who plans a crackdown on prostitution as part of a campaign against crime. Mr Sarkozy intends to leave prostitution as it is but ban, for the first time, "passive soliciting", such as dressing in a provocative way to attract clients.

The government has said the new law is aimed mostly at the foreign women, and men, who have invaded the streets in chic areas of Paris and other cities. Officials have let it be known the law would be enforced selectively and that street-walking in "traditional" areas such as the Rue Saint Denis in central Paris would not be suppressed.

But French prostitutes' groups say the effect would be to put women more than ever at the mercy of pimps and corrupt police officers. They say there is no need for a new law. No serious attempt has been made, they say, to enforce existing laws that forbid pimping and "active soliciting", such as calling to potential clients.

The prostitutes gathered outside the Sénat, the upper house of the French parliament, and marched about a mile through the left bank of Paris to the Assembleé Nationale, the lower house. Mr Sarkozy's crime bill was supposed to begin its first reading in the Sénat yesterday but it was postponed because of pressure of other work.

The prostitutes sang: "Nous toutes les filles, on n'aime plus Sarkozy, Il est vilain et pas gentil." (All the girls don't like Sarkozy anymore. He's not nice. He's nasty.) Mr Sarkozy's package of suggested changes to the criminal code would also focus on gypsies, professional beggars and squatters and would tighten gun laws. President Jacques Chirac campaigned successfully for re-election in the spring by drawing attention to statistics showing a rise in violent crime and a growing public sense of insecurity in France.

Critics say Mr Sarkozy's proposed changes are aimed at the poorest and most vulnerable sectors in society. They say they aim to sweep "undesirables" out of residential areas, rather than truly address violent crime.

The proposed law change governing prostitution would make a criminal offence of any attempt publicly to "incite remunerated sexual relations" by any means, "including manner of dress and attitude". The first draft failed to include the word "remunerated" and could have threatened six-month jail terms for any man or woman dressed in a provocative way or trying to pick up another person. The wording has been changed.

Claire Carthonnet, 32, a prostitute in Lyons since she was 17, said they should be seen as victims. "The new law would make us delinquents, even criminals," she said. "But in the five years since these foreign women have been arriving en masse on our turf, there has been no effort by the police or politicians to dismantle the networks that run them." Prostitute support groups say there are 18,000 of them in France, more than half foreign, mostly from eastern Europe and Africa.