The Myanmar Times

Law changes delayed after MP urges sex worker protections

By Htoo Thant   |   Thursday, 19 November 2015

Draft changes to a law outlawing prostitution have been sent back to committee after an upper house MP objected and argued that the law should be amended to protect, rather than punish, sex workers.

A man talks to a sex worker along Inya Lake in Yangon. (Zarni Phyo/The Myanmar Times)

Yangon Region parliamentarian U Phone Myint Aung urged MPs to look past ingrained cultural aversion to sex work and acknowledge that efforts to stop prostitution would inevitably fail. Instead, lawmakers should seek to protect sex workers, who are marginalised and vulnerable under the current laws.

He said it was hypocritical to allow businesspeople to open karaoke bars and nightclubs but punish the sex workers who operate within them. Many prostitutes are sent to prison due to the Suppression of Prostitution Act (1949) but most resume their trade when they are released, he said, because it is difficult to start a new life.

“There is no one to protect their rights,” he said. “I stand for sex workers. We should understand that … the culture of the world has changed.”

Following his plea, Amyotha Hluttaw Speaker U Khin Aung Myint sent the amendment to the Suppression of Prostitution Act back to the Bill Committee.

Rather than decriminalise prostitution or protect sex workers, the amendments, submitted by the Ministry of Home Affairs in June, propose punishing both sex workers and their clients.

At the time, Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Brigadier General Kyaw Kyaw Tun said the amendments were necessary to adjust the law “from a health and human rights point of view”.

The original amendment proposed caning men caught with a prostitute. However, after discussing the issue with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement on July 20, the bill committee recommended the punishment be changed to a prison term of up to one year with hard labour, and a fine.

The committee also proposed adding a section on providing education to prostitutes in an effort to “rehabilitate” them.

In 2013, National League for Democracy MP Daw Sandar Min proposed decriminalising sex work but her motion was overwhelmingly rejected by the lower house.

U Phone Myint Aung’s call for more substantive reform of the law was backed yesterday by Dr Khin Maung Lwin, a retired director for the Ministry of Health who worked extensively on combating the spread of HIV/AIDS.

He said that health staff faced difficulties providing health education to sex workers because the profession is illegal.

Another hluttaw representative, who asked not to be named, said yesterday he agreed with U Phone Myint Aung.

The MP said the Suppression of Prostitution Act was sorely outdated.

“As its name indicates, it is designed to suppress sex workers. But really it is time to legalise and protect these workers,” he said. “In the past, sex workers were sent to jail to suppress them. But they did not disappear – the only consequence was that their lives were destroyed.”

Translation by Thiri Min Htun