Another  sexual worker killed in Tlalpan
No authority to protect the lives of sex workers
The human rights system shows its opacity

Jaime Montejo’s Independent News Agency note-Calle, Mexico City, April 8, 2010

Some sex workers who have omitted their names for fear of reprisals, relate to the disappearance and subsequent murder of Fernanda, who worked at the intersection Tlalpan and Soria, in the midst of a campaign of social cleansing of the streets, undertaken by the Prosecutor of the Federal District (PGJDF), the Ministry of Public Security of the DF (SSPDF), and the Delegation Benito Juarez, who left  two women killed with impunity.

The approach of the Prosecutor of the capital did not include any  form of protection of sex workers who provided testimony as witnesses or victims during the “operation against trafficking in persons” held at the PalaceHotel January 14, told Laura ‘the sole purpose of this operation was to convince my colleagues to stop work in these streets’. For that reason, there are two sex workers murdered linked to this police operation, declared to this news agency Magdalena, who has decided to stop working in that area of the city since January  after this operation . The action by the Commission on Human Rights of the Federal District (CDHDF) in this case as in most criminal offenses related to sex work is remarkable for its opacity, said Elvira Madrid Romero, president of Brigada Callejera, an organization defending the human rights of sex workers.

The campaign of social cleansing against those who exercise sex work has included the operation “of neighborhood complaints” the 3rd of May 2008, where 18 workers were arrested by a hundred elements of the special corps SSPDF, as part of a program of unilateral reorganization of sex work in the Calzada de Tlalpan, proposed by the then delegate of the PAN Benito Juárez and the Secretary of street programs and the Federal District, Hector Serrano Cortes and the Public Safety Secretary Manuel Mondragon as shown in the “Observatory report on sex work in Mexico” the same year.

The repression of sex workers in this part of town also includes the operation of the Prosecutor of the capital in the ‘Hotel Palace and in at least three other meeting points of sex workers in Calzada de Tlalpan, Laura said, adding that many of her colleagues think that the murders were committed and concealed by the police of the Federal District, to protect the old and new bosses of prostitution in the streets.

Women working in Tlalpan since at least five years declared with confidence that Fernanda has been seen last time on Tuesday, April 6 at nine o’clock, with a man who drove a gray van, and has not returned to collect her personal effects left at the point meeting of Tlalpan and Soria. They also declared that the same night a relative of Fernanda also came to look for  her because she was not answering her mobile and she had not been seen entering any hotel after nine o’clock.

Wednesday, April 7, at about nine o’clock, sex workers in Soria Tlalpan have been informed of the discovery of the corpse of their colleague in Colonia Atlantida, where the inhabitants have reported the presence of the dead body of Fernanda, inside a X-Trail SUV, with license plate 199-TPB.

The question that Laura and her colleagues ask themselves is “How many more deaths needs the Government of the Federal District to clean Tlalpan from sex workers?”