It’s interesting that Disney and Pixar have just come out with a third film about talking cars. Not because we are huge fans of cartoons, but because our society treats some of its most vulnerable people as if they were nothing more than cars. It’s especially the island’s sex workers that get the vehicle treatment. Every day, they wake up knowing that they have an entire system against them. It’s beyond insane that Mauritius still only criminalises the supply side of prostitution and lets the sex buyers run free.

The model, an unfortunate leftover from a different time and mindset, is copied from abroad. It was originally built on the theory that men had a stronger sex drive than women – an animal instinct that they supposedly had to live out for the sake of their health. And so, it was considered important for men to have access to a large pool of pleasure providers. Women who sold sex (the world’s oldest profession) were a tolerated option for men who couldn’t get their lust satisfied in other ways. The only problem with the sex paradise slash hell system was that venereal diseases spread like wildfire since condoms were not widely available. Many countries got around the problem by – that’s right – making it illegal to sell sex. They had no intention of actually ending the trade, but through criminalising prostitution, the state could get its hands on the girls and exercise disease prevention that way. At the so-called Inspection Authorities (similar to those that exist for motor vehicles) it was mandatory for women who had been arrested for prostitution to report for inspection (gynaecological examinations) every week. If they didn’t, they risked prison.

Very often, it was the sex buyers who reported the women to the police, to make sure that they got into the inspection programme. Does that ring a bell? Who are often called as witnesses in prostitution court cases in Mauritius now, before they themselves walk away free? That’s right – the sex buyers. Disease prevention is no longer the reason, but the fact remains that the system is built on a skewed world view where sex buyers are seen as innocent chaps who just needed a girl for the night while the women are the demons. But even though there is a strong international lobby against criminalising only the supply side of prostitution – the European Union is dead against it – Mauritius clings on to an ancient system built on outdated values.

The real problem is not even what the system says about our (lack of) values. The real problem is that an already vulnerable group of people – sex work is strongly linked to severe forms of posttraumatic stress disorder – is left completely unprotected. A Mauritian sex worker who gets raped, injured or violated in any way cannot go to the police or the Human Rights Commission – she’ll get arrested.

We live in year 2017. Isn’t it time we stopped treating people like cars?

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