GiliGold/VAD_KnessetCorpus huggingface dataset:
Gunilla Ekberg: Norway has 4.5 million inhabitants; Denmark has, no, Denmark has 4.5 and Norway has about 4.
Gunilla Ekberg: Sweden has 10 million individuals, citizens, not in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: The concern that prostitution would move to other arenas, so away from street prostitution into indoors, has not been fulfilled.
Gunilla Ekberg: Prostitution on the Internet and, as I said before, a lot of the prostitution in many of our countries actually takes place through websites, on the Internet.
Gunilla Ekberg: And the inquiry concluded that it has increased in Sweden, as it has in other countries, but that is not due to the law; it's due to the development of, generally, online technology, because, you know, when we got the law, it was in 1999.
Gunilla Ekberg: And if you remember, I didn't even have e-mail till 1997.
Gunilla Ekberg: I don't know, but there's been an explosive development.
Gunilla Ekberg: And I wouldn't have my iPhone with me like I do now.
Gunilla Ekberg: Sorry, I didn't mean to be commercial here.
Gunilla Ekberg: So, and also they looked at the number of individuals who are sold via the Internet, web pages and ads, in Sweden compared to the neighboring country, and they say there are a much larger number of those websites but also numbers of individuals that are sold in the neighboring countries via the Internet, compared to Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: There is no evidence of increase of indoor prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: And then she says "Despite a significant increase in prostitution in the neighboring countries during the past ten years, there is no evidence of a similar increase in Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: " And she says "It is reasonable to believe that this is due to the criminalization of the purchase of sexual service in Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: " We also have academic parallel Nordic research, so the Nordic countries also did a parallel academic study on prostitution, and they quite reluctantly, I have to say, came to the conclusion, the same conclusion, that there is no evidence of increase in prostitution in Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: That what has perhaps been important for many countries who are concerned about organized crime.
Gunilla Ekberg: And, you know, if you have a friendly market, no matter what it is, and it's organized, so if you have a friendly drug market, those who like to make a profit of selling drugs will go to that market and sell it.
Gunilla Ekberg: If you put into place different regulations, rules, laws, whatever, implementation of laws, in a market, the businesspeople would go somewhere else.
Gunilla Ekberg: The law functions exactly that way.
Gunilla Ekberg: The law, and he or she agrees with the Swedish National Rapporteur on Trafficking, which is a position we've had since 1998, who writes annual reports of the situation of trafficking within the country and across borders, because you have to look at how the local pimps move around as well.
Gunilla Ekberg: And she, both of them say that the law is functioning as a barrier for the establishment of organized crime networks in Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: I mean, it's not difficult to understand.
Gunilla Ekberg: And we even have phone-tapping evidence, and now also in Norway, but Swedish phone-tapping evidence where the police has listened to conversations between members of organized crime networks, for example, in the Baltic countries.
Gunilla Ekberg: So the Estonian mafia has always been interested in moving their business from Finland to Sweden, they've never succeeded to do that, but, where they suggest that they would like to bring women to Sweden, and the Swedish criminal element says 'Don't do that.
Gunilla Ekberg: It is too expensive, it's too difficult to set up shop, because this is a prioritized investigation area for the police.
Gunilla Ekberg: Go to', and it says clearly Denmark, where there's a completely tolerated prostitution industry, Germany or Netherlands, all of them say that.
Gunilla Ekberg: And I think that's important, because of course that affects also secondary crime, because organized crime networks that traffic women, they also like to traffic drugs, or they may be involved in other organized crime ways.
Gunilla Ekberg: The law also, apart from the direct deterrent for men to buy women in prostitution or buy men in prostitution, it was important, and I notice you talked about that, the normative change.
Gunilla Ekberg: And you, who knows something, are interested in how you create laws.
Gunilla Ekberg: Laws usually have two goals; one is of course to get rid of whatever criminal thing that you want to stop.
Gunilla Ekberg: But laws can also function as a creation of a norm and expressing something that we already have decided.
Gunilla Ekberg: But many laws function actually as a normative change indicator.
Gunilla Ekberg: So rape legislation, not everyone thinks that rape legislation is necessary, but then you have rape legislation, and then you know that that's not acceptable.
Gunilla Ekberg: This law has functioned the same way.
Gunilla Ekberg: And we have, during the whole time that the law has been in place, we've done studies of the public's attitude to the law and to the principles behind the law.
Gunilla Ekberg: And the number has consistently, in support of the law, has consistently been between 72 and 80%, around.
Gunilla Ekberg: And the latest poll was, and the latest is actually even academic research, so it's even more qualitative, and at the time it was about 73%.
Gunilla Ekberg: So that hasn't shifted during this whole time.
Gunilla Ekberg: But for us it was important also to see how this law affects those men who actually want to buy, who are either buying or who are thinking of buying somebody for prostitution purposes.
Gunilla Ekberg: So in 1996, unrelated to the work on the law, there's a study that's repeated in Sweden every 15 years, I think, called "Sex in Sweden".
Gunilla Ekberg: It is not about sex.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's about sexual behavior, all of the different things, sexual education, and it's the People's Health Institute, which is a public authority; it looks at all kinds of aspects.
Gunilla Ekberg: And they had one aspect where they did a very good academic research on interviewing men in prostitution, sorry, men who had purchased somebody once or more for prostitution purposes.
Gunilla Ekberg: And at that time it was 13.6% of all men in Sweden over 18; so every eighth man.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's low to start out with.
Gunilla Ekberg: We have other countries where similar studies, like Thailand where it's 90%.
Gunilla Ekberg: Spain, it's around 40.
Gunilla Ekberg: It depends on the patriarchal culture and how accepted it is.
Gunilla Ekberg: But it specifically depends on if you have a legal industry, because if you have a legal industry and if you have normalized the right to buy somebody, of course more men will purchase.
Gunilla Ekberg: The study was repeated by the same researchers in 2008, and now only 7.8% of Swedish men over 18 has purchased somebody for prostitution purposes, and that's interesting facts.
Gunilla Ekberg: So there's been a normative change.
Gunilla Ekberg: I used to, I don't so much now, but I used to do a lot of things in schools.
Gunilla Ekberg: And we did actually do a project in schools while I was in the government, where we have, we gave the opportunity to 65,000 high-school students between 15 and 18, to have a day where they talked about gender equality, prostitution, pornography, different things like that, which I think one should do.
Gunilla Ekberg: And in fact in the curriculum now, sexual education is not about just how you have sex, but it's about how attitudes to women, attitudes to men, prostitution, pornography and all of those things that affect, it's important to start to change the attitude of young men, because of lot of young men right now get their sexual education through websites on the Internet, and those are stereotypically violent against women, generally speaking.
Gunilla Ekberg: About the, there was misgivings, of course, and you're going to ask me questions like 'Did it go underground,' so I'll answer that later when you ask me.
Gunilla Ekberg: But there was misgivings that it would be difficult for social workers to be able to meet and reach out to those who were in prostitution, because there was arguments that if there is street prostitution, we know where they are and, if they end up being in indoor prostitution, it's going to be difficult.
Gunilla Ekberg: I'm a social worker.
Gunilla Ekberg: I worked as a social worker for 19 years before I became a lawyer.
Gunilla Ekberg: I worked with women in prostitution in three countries, and my experience from being a social worker is that you have a responsibility as a social worker that when the group of people you work with change, you change how you work.
Gunilla Ekberg: And that is actually what has happened in Sweden.
Gunilla Ekberg: The three centers that we've had since the '70s, working with individuals in prostitution, (there's one in Stockholm, one in Gothenburg and one in Malmo), have changed, and they've done some really creative work in how to reach out to individuals who are prostituted in other areas.
Gunilla Ekberg: The social workers also work in collaboration with the police.
Gunilla Ekberg: And the police, wherever it is in Sweden, have to give, when they meet women or men, or whatever, in prostitution, have to give a referral to the social support agencies.
Gunilla Ekberg: And I also, one other thing, it's not in the inquiry but it's in reality, is that we don't support social support agencies that just work on harm reduction policies.
Gunilla Ekberg: "Harm reduction work with women in prostitution to maintain their health and their life within the prostitution industry.
Gunilla Ekberg: All our services must have the, and give the opportunity for those who are in prostitution, to exit the industry.
Gunilla Ekberg: And that is, I cannot underline that more.
Gunilla Ekberg: The only thing if you do harm reduction is that you maintain the health for the pimps to make more money off of the women who are in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: So I want to, how much more time can I have?
Gunilla Ekberg: Five more minutes.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: You can take.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: זה נושא מאוד חשוב, אנחנו נמשיך להקשיב, כי אין לנו הזדמנות נוספת לשמוע, ואת עצמנו יש לנו הזדמנות לשמוע ולהשמיע עד בלי די, אז אנחנו נאפשר לגברת אקברג עוד רבע שעה, 20 דקות.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: מבחינתי היא יכולה לקחת את כל זמן, אנחנו נדון בזה אחר כך.
Gunilla Ekberg: You don't know what you're telling me. I can talk forever.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: But it's very important,
Gunilla Ekberg: Yeah, it is.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: Because this is, you know, a one-day chance to hear you, and we can talk among ourselves next week, and ask the questions we can ask, maybe we'll leave a few minutes to ask questions.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: So you can take 15 minutes and then, no, maybe 10 minutes, and then we will ask questions and you can answer.
Gunilla Ekberg: I'll speak 10 more minutes and then,
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: היא תדבר 10 דקות, נשאל שאלות, בבקשה תכתבו לכם את השאלות ואז היא תוכל לענות.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: אנחנו נגנוב כמה דקות מהמליאה.
Gunilla Ekberg: Okay, so I'll try and keep it to 10 minutes, and then you can ask me all of the questions you want to ask.
Gunilla Ekberg: I think it's important, because of course central to our, not just the law but all of the policies and working on prostitution and on trafficking.
Gunilla Ekberg: And we don't separate it.
Gunilla Ekberg: I want to underline that with 6 lines.
Gunilla Ekberg: The purpose of the trafficking in human beings, the majority of the victims are to be trafficked into the exploitation in the prostitution industry.
Gunilla Ekberg: And there is all kinds of evidence for that, but the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs says in their report that about 78% of all victims of human trafficking in the world are female and are intended for the exploitation in the prostitution industry.
Gunilla Ekberg: So just to underline that you cannot separate these things, because the trafficking is just a method, a tool of the traffickers and the pimps to move the commodities around to satisfy the buyers, because buyers don't like to buy the same women all the time; they want new blood, new women.
Gunilla Ekberg: So it's not very complicated and it shouldn't be separate.
Gunilla Ekberg: So we need to talk about the men, obviously, like, who are the men who buy women in prostitution, or buy men in prostitution, or buy transgender?
Gunilla Ekberg: This lately, the last 5 or 6 years, there's been a lot of research, speaking with men, both who have the intention or would like to buy somebody but also those who have bought.
Gunilla Ekberg: We have all the research, as I said, in Sweden, not just this number-crunching but also interviews with buyers.
Gunilla Ekberg: There's been two very interesting reports done: one in the UK, not Scotland, so England and Northern Ireland and Wales, and there's another report in Scotland.
Gunilla Ekberg: Both of them have interviewed around 110 men in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: I will send or have somebody send this research to you.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's qualitative research with about 50 to 100 questions that are given to these men; some of them have, well, never mind how they found them; that's academic.
Gunilla Ekberg: I'm also involved in a project in Lebanon where we're doing the same research with Lebanese men, and there we have interviewed 110, with the same results by the way.
Gunilla Ekberg: And there's also research done in other parts of the world, because we want to prove that there's nothing culturally specific about buying somebody in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: It might be, the venues might be culturally specific.
Gunilla Ekberg: The prostitution industry might be nationally or culturally specific.
Gunilla Ekberg: But the attitudes of the men are the same.
Gunilla Ekberg: What we can find from this research, and also when we look at the statistics for the law in Sweden, and we have till, from 1st of January, 1999 to the 31st of May this year, 3,787 men have been arrested under the law; many more have been warned that if they don't back off, they're going to be charged.
Gunilla Ekberg: So the law for us is not the most important thing is to put people in prison or fine them, but we want them to stop their behavior.
Gunilla Ekberg: And the people has, because they are involved constantly in all of the venues that are left, if you would talk to, I work a lot with the police and I work a lot of with the National Rapporteur and they would all say, you know, 'Maybe 10 times as many we've stopped before they bought.' And we can see from the statistics plus the research, the men who buy are all ages.
Gunilla Ekberg: This is not going to come as a surprise to you, but I still want to go through it.
Gunilla Ekberg: They're all ages.
Gunilla Ekberg: In Sweden the youngest one was 15, the oldest one is 78, that's been arrested.
Gunilla Ekberg: The majority of the buyers are of the younger spectrum of the age limit, because men are more sexually active when they're younger, usually; usually.
Gunilla Ekberg: They come from all income classes, all ethnic backgrounds, all whatever category you would find in a society, so all religions, all subcategories you can think of.
Gunilla Ekberg: Most of them have been, are married or live with a girlfriend.
Gunilla Ekberg: So they are sexually active men.
Gunilla Ekberg: They are already sexually active outside of prostitution, which I think this man, the lecture that you were quoting, said very clearly, the man who wrote to you,
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: Yeah, I have another one, 83 years old.
Gunilla Ekberg: It was a … man who buys somebody for prostitution purposes and he, I've also received many of those letters, by the way.
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: You can't count them.
Gunilla Ekberg: They often have children.
Gunilla Ekberg: So men who have or have had many sexual partners are the most common buyers.
Gunilla Ekberg: And that of course I want to underline, because that dispels the myth that some people want to spread about who is buying in prostitution, which is identified as a lonely man, sexually unattractive, with no other option for sexual outlets than buying somebody for prostitution purposes.
Gunilla Ekberg: That is not true.
Gunilla Ekberg: That is absolutely not true, and it's not true in any of the countries where we have made this research.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's also not true if you talk to women in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: Because I used to work with women as a social worker, I've talked to many women in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: I have friends who have experience of prostitution, and they would absolutely agree.
Gunilla Ekberg: They could make lists of doctors and, everything from doctors to whoever, who buy them, depending on which venue they were prostituted in.
Gunilla Ekberg: What's interesting also in this, all of this research, not only have we asked why they buy, and there are all kinds of reasons that I don't have to go through, because the reason's kind of the same as what the men will make up.
Gunilla Ekberg: But generally if you analyze what they say as a reason, it is a possibility to have, not to have to get so involved in trying to make the woman pleased about having to be with that man; it's a way of not having to spend much time being social; it's a way of controlling women in a way that they can't do, or they may do even other, but it's a way of, like, one of the men the Swedish researchers talked to who said 'It's like buying a hamburger at McDonald's: It's quick, it's greasy and then it's over.
Gunilla Ekberg: ' And they will say even worse things than that.
Gunilla Ekberg: I also have looked at the research that was done on buyers in Sweden, so in the beginning of the 20th century, just to see.
Gunilla Ekberg: And I can tell you that it's exactly, the results are the same, exactly the same.
Gunilla Ekberg: But what's interesting is, when you do the research and you ask them 'What would stop you from buying somebody,' 'What would be an effective deterrent for you not to use somebody in prostitution,' and they will say the same thing.
Gunilla Ekberg: All of them have said the same thing.
Gunilla Ekberg: About 80% of everyone in this research say 'There's two things that will stop us: number 1 is legislation that prohibits the purchase of a sexual service, and the second one is public shaming,' so having your photo with name and a paper on a billboard, on a poster, whatever.
Gunilla Ekberg: And so I think we agree.
Gunilla Ekberg: We think that the law works, and they tell us that the law would work.
Gunilla Ekberg: No surprise there.
Gunilla Ekberg: Now, I'll take the police investigations in questions instead of, but what I would like to do is just outline what I think is important to do if you want to change a culture of prostitution to a culture, as we said, kind of like a PR slogan that no one should be for sale in Sweden, nobody should be able to purchase somebody.
Gunilla Ekberg: Of course we have not succeeded with that.
Gunilla Ekberg: And, see, I hope you understand that a change in attitudes and a change in law and all of that, you don't do that 100% in twelve and a half years.
Gunilla Ekberg: But what we have done, and what is incredibly important when you work on, well, any political change that you want to do, is that you have a vision of an ultimate goal of where you want to go.
Gunilla Ekberg: And that vision of course, so if its poverty, we want to end poverty, then you have to, whatever you do to get that goal, have to be on a continuum and be connected to each other.
Gunilla Ekberg: And so in the world right now, when it comes to prostitution, there are two different political visions, if you like: There is the knee-level vision that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world,
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: And then always asking who wrote the book.
Gunilla Ekberg: Yeah.
Gunilla Ekberg: Exactly.
Gunilla Ekberg: We usually say the oldest profession was probably midwives, you know, not, or pimp possibly, but not women in prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: They say it's the oldest profession in the world, men cannot control their sexuality; as he says, we need, I've had, in many conferences in some countries, men have stood up and said the same thing as the letter-writer; they say to me 'Look, Ms.
Gunilla Ekberg: Ekberg, what are we going to do if we can't go to women in prostitution?' And I usually say 'You take it in your own hands.
Gunilla Ekberg: ' Quite a funny, it's,
Chairman Orit Zuaretz: It's literal.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's not that.
Gunilla Ekberg: But what I'm saying with that, and what usually happens when we get there, is that we start talking about the myths about male sexuality.
Gunilla Ekberg: And there are groups in Sweden, groups of men in Sweden now who are actually willing to talk about male sexuality and all of the ideas that they will explode or whatever's going to happen if they don't get, as this letter-writer says, this possibility.
Gunilla Ekberg: That's not true.
Gunilla Ekberg: That is a socially constructed idea about male sexuality, which is something you have to start talking about eventually when you talk about this.
Gunilla Ekberg: But the political vision is, for them, is that you have to reduce the harm in prostitution, and you do that different ways, by, as I said, harm reduction things for women in prostitution, setting up brothels, whatever they can think of.
Gunilla Ekberg: Of course that doesn't reduce the harm; that just contains the harm, because the harm is the act of prostitution; it's the violence.
Gunilla Ekberg: And then you have what we call, and we do that, and that is the international human-rights analysis of prostitution, where it's actually a possibility as a vision to end prostitution and actually to have the view that women and men and young boys and girls have a right to live without being exploited through prostitution, as we have a right to not be subjected to other forms of violence.
Gunilla Ekberg: So you have to discuss the vision, because if you say nothing about that, you're going to have a patchwork of different initiatives that actually would lead you in the wrong direction.
Gunilla Ekberg: So harm reduction does not, because if you talk about harm reduction, the best harm reduction is of course to remove the buyers.
Gunilla Ekberg: But it's not part of those harm reduction problems.
Gunilla Ekberg: It has to be made a political priority to work on these issues, as is violence against women of other forms.
Gunilla Ekberg: So it needs to be understood in a society that all of the ones who are responsible for this work, so the police, the health authorities, the social-welfare departments, funding for NGOs, that has to be made a political priority.
Gunilla Ekberg: And it can be.
Gunilla Ekberg: It doesn't mean that you put other political priorities aside.
Gunilla Ekberg: Remember, even though there are many women and men in prostitution, it is still not a humongous amount of people; and especially if you have this law, that will be many less.
Gunilla Ekberg: So it's not that it's going to take half of the state budget to do this, which it seems like some countries think that that would be necessary.
Gunilla Ekberg: It's important, when we look at the enforcement of this kind of legislation is that you train the police, not just in investigation but in changes of attitudes.
Gunilla Ekberg: And we had, I mean, we had all kinds of, not so funny then, but funny situations in the Swedish police where police officers identified themselves with the arrested buyers and felt extremely sorry for these men and gave suggestions to them that the letter about that they had committed a crime should not be sent to their home address, because then the wife would find out; it should be, didn't they have a post-office box, or 'Maybe could we send it to your work?
Gunilla Ekberg: ' No. Yeah.
Gunilla Ekberg: And also change your attitudes in terms of those who are victims of prostitution.
Gunilla Ekberg: But these are victims.
Gunilla Ekberg: They are crime victims.
Gunilla Ekberg: They should be treated like other crime victims.