|
As the saying goes, “history repeats itself”. Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg is now legislating that indecently dressed women in areas known for the loitering of prostitutes will be hauled in by the police.
Let me now go back to the sixties. Malta started experiencing tourism and with it came women in hot pants and two-piece suits (not bikinis then). What happened? Every one and his brother started committing illegal arrests taking these women straight to the police station. This happened particularly in Valletta and Sliema. These illegal arrests were being carried out even by priests actually grabbing tourists from the middle of the street and hauling them off to the police stations.
This turned out to be a national dilemma with these incidents being reported on the papers daily. It was being argued, and rightly so, that the criminals were those who were committing the crime of holding people against their will and not the women in hot pants. Eventually that brilliant Police Commissioner Vivien de Gray issued a police circular which said, in plain language, that indecency in dress was to be judged upon by the bobby on site and no one else, and in a couple of days this whole mess dissipated into nothing.
If this law is going to be legislated, then we are going to have a repeat performance of the sixties and the police will be inundated by all the do-gooders of this country and most police stations will finish up like fashion catwalks.
And what about the male of the species? Does Minister Tonio Borg know that there are as many males as there are females in these areas who are prostituting themselves, and exhibiting their wares in the process? Perhaps we do not want to admit this and put our head in the sand but these do exist. Are the police going to target just women? Where is equality then?
If we want to control prostitution, there are only two ways of doing it. Either concentrate on the pimps and charge them ruthlessly because they are the main instigators of prostitution and not the prostitutes themselves, or else legalise the whole sad mess and at least have healthy, controlled outlets for the sexual frustration that exists the world over, not least in Malta.
Charles Demicoli
Iklin
|
