A few days ago, referencing the term “sex worker” used for the protagonist of the five-Oscar winning film “Anora,” we mentioned the death of a 24-year-old woman at a cabaret in the occupied territories.
Her death was recorded as “suicide due to shame”. Yesterday, the Greek website Pandora’s Box followed up on this incident, revealing details about the young woman.
She was from Moldova and already had a 4-year-old child. She traveled to the occupied areas without properly knowing where she was going or what exactly she would be doing, falling prey to agents who promise vulnerable young women easy money.
As organisations in the occupied territories reported, the young woman was held as a sex slave; although she had been persuaded to travel to the area supposedly for a well-paid position as a manager, when she arrived, they took her passport and forced her to provide sexual services.
Until a few days ago when she was found dead in the cabaret toilets. The death was by hanging, according to medical examiners.
And why should we care what happens in the occupied territories? When someone crosses the Agios Dometios checkpoint and turns left towards Gerolakkos, they will be shocked (if they’re not already familiar) by how many nightclubs in pink, fuchsia, and other colors exist there, resembling one enormous brothel.
Why in this particular place? For the same reason Tatar desperately wants to open a checkpoint at Mia Milia. To serve the customers. The majority of whom obviously come from the free areas. The brothels of Gerolakkos are like a bicommunal project. That’s why the death of Anastasia Melenga—if we believe in customer responsibility—concerns us.
A few years ago, the same phenomenon of brutal exploitation of women, who were even characterised as “artists,” prevailed in the free areas. A victim of this era was 20-year-old Oxana Rantseva, who was kept locked in an apartment in Limassol and forced to accept clients, while when she arrived, she believed she would work as an interpreter.
The young woman was found dead below the apartment where she was being held, and her father began an enormous struggle to prove the real circumstances that led to his child’s death.
After a fight by many people, women primarily, the phenomenon of cabarets and “artists” disappeared, while in 2014 a law was passed regulating human trafficking and sexual exploitation, with the most important provision being the criminalisation of sex trafficking clients and the imposition of stricter penalties on perpetrators.
Of course, neither prostitution nor the exploitation of women was eliminated. It changed its methods of operation. And the clients, Greek Cypriot clients, now visit the occupied territories.
