Criminalising sex work does more harm than good

SUNTI ANI, an Indonesian sex worker, has been arrested more times than she can count. She lives in Malang, in the province of East Java, where her trade was criminalised in 2014 on the basis that prostitution is “prohibited by all religions”. Until then, she worked in a brothel. But after, she says, “we were forced to see our clients in cafés and on the streets.” She earns less money than before. And she is more wary of the police, who once used her possession of a condom as evidence against her.