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Colleen Lee

Hundreds of prostitutes have complained to a support group that the police coerced them into revealing  the  websites on which  they advertised  and the contact details of their landlords and real estate agents,  the group said yesterday.

The Zi Teng  women's network said it had received 282 complaints  in the past two weeks after a recent  operation against online  brothel guides.

Sex worker Yo Yo  said four police officers came  to her brothel three days ago.

'They asked on which websites I put advertisements and asked about my landlord and the rent,' she said.

Yo Yo, who arrived from the mainland two years ago, said the police had also forced her to sign a document after questioning. '[The document] is roughly about on which websites I advertise, but I wasn't given  enough time to go through it.

'I refused to sign at first. But then they said they would not go away if I didn't sign. So I relented.'

Another prostitute, Ah Wah, whose brothel was inspected by the police five days ago,  said: 'I told them  I had the right not to answer their questions. But they said other officers might come again if I refused.'

The recently arrived mainland immigrant said it cost HK$90 a day to advertise in newspapers, but only HK$600 a month  on the internet.

Ah Wah said she had had no customers in the past three days since  the  website she used  had been shut.

Sex worker May  said 70 to 80 per cent of her clients learned about her brothel on the internet. She said the police had also asked her for the contact details of her landlord and the real estate agent in early March.

The group's spokeswoman, Elaine Lam Yee-ling,  said about  98 per cent of some 200,000 sex workers in the city were self-employed. 'They advertise on websites and in newspapers to make a living.'

The group had launched a 'one person, one letter' campaign against police abuse of power, she said.

The police had not made a comment  by late last night.



Police bullying us, say prostitutes