In recent months sex workers have become increasingly visible along main roads and in busy restaurants of junta controlled Sittwe City, the capital of Arakan (Rakhine) State.
DMG interviewed about 10 Sittwe City residents about the increase in prostitution. The residents said that sex workers had become more prevalent and increasingly visible in several areas of the city, including Waithali football stadium, the highway bus station compound, Sittwe Strand Road, the BXT pier, and some of the city's busiest restaurants.
Previously there were sex workers in Sittwe City, but far fewer of them and they typically only operated in groups at a few specific locations.
A Sittwe resident said to DMG: “It wasn’t like this before. Lately, we’ve been seeing them a lot, here and there at night. They’re of all ages, including women in their 30s or 40s. Some of them even try to lure men by getting physically close.”
Sex workers are also offering their services online in a private Telegram group called ‘Date Girls from Sittwe’.
Most business people, wealthier residents of Sittwe and those who can afford to have already fled Sittwe because of fighting in the city.
Residents who are unable to leave are facing growing hardships due to a lack of employment and many are also going hungry due to food shortages.
With jobs so scarce and food prices so high, hunger has become a serious issue for some of the city’s poorer residents and some women have no choice but to turn to sex work, according to a woman living in Sittwe City.
She said: “A neighbour from my ward is also in prostitution now. She often goes out at night with her makeup on. She has two children. She probably took this job because she couldn’t stand seeing her kids go hungry. I was shocked when I found out, but I don’t blame her either
As women have become ever more desperate and prostitution becomes more common, the price being charged by sex workers has dropped from 25,000 to 100,000 MMK per customer to around 10,000 to 15,000 MMK a customer. They are also openly propositioning men and offering their services.
“I personally had a woman approach me and offer her services. She told me I could take her anywhere I wanted, and it would only cost me 10,000 MMK,” said Ko Maung Maung (not his real name), a Sittwe resident.
He also explained that the main clients of prostitutes in Sittwe City are junta-aligned police personnel and junta troops who frequently patrol at night.
He said: “At two popular restaurants in Sittwe, the women are openly seen seeking customers. Their main clients include low-ranking officers from the police and military. Some of the police and soldiers even take the women to abandoned houses where the owners have left.”
The Arakan Army controls nearly all of Arakan State except for Sittwe City and the towns of Manaung and Kyaukphyu.
There is frequent fighting in Sittwe City between the AA and the junta army. This has reduced security, decimated the local economy and the local provision of social and health care. As a result residents still left in the city are facing extreme hardships and a struggle to survive, according to a woman from an undisclosed civil society organisation who wished to remain anonymous.
She said: “The increase in sex workers can have both positive and negative effects. On one hand, it might reduce the number of sexual predators targeting children. On the other hand, it raises the risk of sex workers contracting HIV and other STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] through unprotected sex. And with Sittwe already facing a shortage of HIV and TB medications, that’s a real concern for the sex workers.”
She also warned that underage children in Sittwe City may be driven to prostitution because of the hardships they face. Locals also said that they are concerned that the number of prostitutes in the city will carry on rising if locals continue having to face hardships.
