HOLLAND:Amsterdam's red light district is a haven for organised crime, according to the mayor and officials who are waging war on the centuries old sex trade, using the legal status of brothel-keeping to revoke the permits of a string of brothel owners and drive them out of business.
A major player in Amsterdam's porn industry and the red light district for decades has already sold off 20 buildings housing window prostitution and sex clubs to a state-funded housing corporation in a €25 million deal.
It is seen as an important victory for the municipality, which aims to transform parts of the red light district into stylish boutiques and upmarket apartments to replace the scantily clad women who pose provocatively behind windows and the area's lurid shops crammed with sex toys and porn movies.
The move is a setback to Amsterdam's thriving sex industry which attracts thousands of tourists - as well as customers - daily. Now, even more sex businesses, unable to prove that they have no crime connections, face closure. The city council has refused to renew their licences in the largest crackdown on one of the city's biggest money-spinners - the sex trade.
The writing had been on the walls of the neon-lit rosy windows that line Amsterdam's red light district ever since city mayor Job Cohen pledged a crusade late last year to clean up the notorious "Wallen". "It's not about chasing prostitution out of Amsterdam - there is just too much of it in this part of the city," he said.
Since the 17th century the famous downtown maze of narrow alleyways has attracted prostitutes and their clients and is one of the Dutch capital's major tourist draws. But the famed tolerance of the Dutch has reached its limits and the city authorities and police are increasingly worried about the level of crime within the sex business, especially money laundering and human trafficking. It is believed that around 3,500 women are trafficked into the Netherlands each year from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia to work in secret brothels or sex clubs, often under shocking conditions.
The city's deputy mayor, Lodewijk Asscher, denies that the clampdown on the sex trade will ruin Amsterdam's tourist industry. He says the city council wants to target crime rather than prostitution, especially women trafficking, because a disturbing percentage of such women have been linked to the window brothels, even though these (the windows) became legal in the Netherlands in 2000.
"We have legalised prostitution in this city and we have an obligation to fight crime associated with it. If we don't protect the women, then it is not tolerance but indifference," he said.
Surveys here show that the legalisation of brothels has not improved life for prostitutes in the Netherlands.
"The legalisation of prostitution did not bring about what many had hoped," explains Mr Cohen. "We are still faced with distressing situations in which women are exploited." So in 2003 Amsterdam introduced a new law allowing officials and the police to fully investigate the sex industry.
The current crackdown on the sex trade has proved popular with residents, but the Dutch sex workers union has criticised the plans for cutting back on window prostitution, arguing that it will force women back on to the streets. The union, De Rood Draad, said the effect would be to force prostitutes to work where it is more dangerous and difficult to monitor the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
But the mayor and city authorities argue that the window prostitution closures will not damage the city's revenue.
"Amsterdam has many other things to offer," said a spokesman.
A wide trawl of the city's sex industry is set to continue, meanwhile, and hotels, cafes and restaurants will also be closely scrutinised for money laundering and other organised crime.