Health security

Criminalized Condoms Force China’s Sex Workers to Make a Difficult Choice

Shasha, a transgender sex worker in China, was stopped on the street one night by the police. Though she hadn’t conducted any business that night, she was hauled to a local precinct for questioning. Once there, the police searched her bag and found lubricant and condoms. Declaring them evidence of guilt, she was immediately sent to a detention center and held for 15 days.

This scenario is all too typical in China, where law enforcement officers routinely seize condoms as evidence of illegal sex work, according to a new report issued this month by Asia Catalyst. The result of this practice is as harmful as it is predictable: sex workers, fearing prosecution, are less likely to carry condoms, increasing their risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Globally, sex workers remain one of the key at-risk populations for HIV. In China, 104,000 new cases of HIV were diagnosed in 2014, and 92.2 percent of these were contracted through sexual contact.