What is Femen ?

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Legislation

Though the law isn’t generally enforced, prostitution is illegal in Ukraine, and two BYuT deputies (in a populist farce worthy of Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy) have moved to authorize administrative fines for patronizing the shady ladies of Okruzhnaya Street and sex workers across the country.


Police will likely take greater interest in nabbing johns since the legislation would permit them to levy on-the-spot fines ranging from UAH 170 to 255 for first offenders to from UAH 204 to 340 for repeaters. On-the-spot fines usually find their way into the officer’s pocket rather than the government’s, giving policemen incentive to curb the oldest profession.


The Interior Ministry says that the prostitution industry generates US $700 million per year in good times, and estimates that figure could double during the financial crisis.

Found in Bird's eye view.

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Article in a turkish newspaper;

translated from a turkish friend in istanbul to german only - please try the google translator.

eine turkische Zeitung berichtet, dass vor der turkischen Botschaft eine Protest-Veranstalung stattgefunden hat und im Interview mit Anne Hutsol wurde die Wahrheit dieses Sextourismus in Ukraine zu Wort gebracht. 60 % sind die Turken. Die Regierung der Ukraine unterstutzt auch heimlich diesen Tourismus, viele Faelle werden vertuscht etc. und Ministerpraesidentin Timosenko handelt wie ein Mann in Frauenkleidung und bis heute hat sie kein einziges Wort uber Frauenrechte gesprochen. Im Parlament sind sehr wenige Frauen vertreten.
Ein Lebenslauf von Anna Hutsol ist in der Zeit auch zu lesen.
Ich kenne diese Zeitung nicht, vielleicht eine lokale Zeitung.
Ich hoffe, dass die beiden Regierungen mit der diplomatischen Beziehungen und gemeinsamen Projekten dieses Problem auf freundschaftliche Weise losen werden.

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10:06 pm: Anna Hutsol, DJ Hell and Alexandra Shevchenko talk at press-conference on sex tourism

At 2:00 pm, May 22, the Press Center of the Ukrainian News agency hosted a Press Conference of the FEMEN women movement entitled “How to erase sexual tourism in Ukraine? Will Ukraine become sex restricted area for Europeans." - a talk which included Anna Hutsol (leader of the FEMEN movement) DJ Hell (world famous producer and musician from Germany) Oleksandra Shevchenko (head of the national programme on fight against sex tourism) and Maksym Pasiuk, choreography director of Lovers dancing band.

Predicted boom of sex tourism in Ukraine has reached threatening level. Devaluation of the hryvnia, tensing of economic turmoil, increase of the number of the poor, and also reduction of air travel prices have stipulated growth of "sexual tourism" in Ukraine. In particular, the Internal Affairs Ministry forecast doubling of sex-industry revenues in Ukraine – from USD 700 million to 1-1.5 billion every year.

Thus, the FEMEN movement demands introduction of criminal responsibility for people who use services of prostitutes, declare the problem of sexual tourism in Ukraine at the state level.

Since very start of the national programme on fight against sex-tourism and prostitution, FEMEN has managed to draw attention of the globe’s society to the problem of criminal sex-industry in Ukraine. The FEMEN movement stand for dignity of the whole country.

The “Ukraine Is Not A Brothel” programme has obtained broad support among the leaders of cultural circles in Europe.

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Summer of So-Called Love
Ukrainian feminists confront a growing sex tourism industry

By MARINA KAMENEV

LATE LAST YEAR, AS UKRAINE started getting seriously hit by the financial crisis, a man in a faux-leather jacket stood on Kiev’s main avenue, Khreschatik Boulevard, strapped into a red-lettered billboard offering “Sexy Ukrainian Women Looking for Love.” Next to him on a small table was a folder of pictures of potential “brides.” Women walked past, averting their gazes.

Anna Hutsol, a young woman wearing long shorts and high-top sneakers, emerged from the metro stop. She rolled her eyes at the sign before heading to a nearby café.

“People think of Ukraine as this giant brothel,” she said. “They can’t tell you about any landmarks or monuments in Ukraine. But they can tell you that there are pretty girls in Kiev who wear next to nothing when it’s summer, and that Kiev’s an easy place to find so-called love.”

Hutsol, 24, has cropped, tangerine colored hair. She founded the feminist organization FEMEN last spring to fight the culture of sex tourism in Ukraine. FEMEN organizes its activism via VKontakte, a Russian version of Facebook, and stages provocative protests that have won press attention.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1993, Russian mail-order brides became a distressing cliché, but as Russia grew wealthy its women were less reliant on foreign husbands. So foreigners looking for an easy marriage turned to Russia’s neighbor, Ukraine. Traveling there was once a lengthy process involving embassies and visa fees, but in 2005 the nation dropped visa requirements for citizens of the European Union and the United States. Consequently, more than 20 million people visit Ukraine each year, and the capital, Kiev, is now a popular tourist destination.

Unfortunately, one of Kiev’s main tourist attractions seems to be women. When the visa laws changed, Ukraine, once just a notorious source of sex-trafficked women, now became a sex-industry destination as well, a gateway from East to West. Explained one sex worker, prostituted Ukrainian women who had worked in other Eastern bloc countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland then came home. Child ****ography also grew more prevalent, since it was now easy to enter this relatively poor country and exploit underage victims, especially homeless children and orphans.

Prostitution is illegal in Ukraine and difficult to track. Official police reports claim there are 12,000 prostitutes, but FEMEN believes the numbers are much higher. If someone is caught soliciting, a nominal fine is paid. No customers or johns are apprehended. In regional cities, police contact the prostituted woman’s parents, ashaming technique intended to decrease the incidence of prostitution.

But brothels remain boldly unembarrassed. The website of Gia Escorts proudly declares, “Ukraine is now the Sex Capital of Europe! …Ukrainian women are more agreeable, dress more revealingly and are cheaper than Western women. Men from the West can get away with saying and doing things they could never get away with [with] the women in their native countries.”

In July of last year, FEMEN organized 30 young women to stand in Independence Square in Kiev carrying signs reading “Ukraine is not a brothel” in several different languages. The most attention-getting part of the protest was that the demonstrators were dressed stereotypically as prostituted women, in tiny skirts, thighhigh stockings and feather boas.

“The Ukrainian newspapers were angry, saying we were creating problems, talking about something that didn’t exist,” says Hutsol. “But the Western press [Reuters and AFP] actually looked at the problem for what it was, and only then did Ukrainian papers follow.”

The rise in sex tourism has also led to the growth of industries such as child ****ography and child prostitution. “I can see a direct correlation between tourism and child prostitution,” says Iryna Konchenkova, head of the international nonprofit School of Equal Opportunities in Ukraine. According to Konchenkova, 11 percent of prostitutes are between the ages of 11 and 15, while 19 percent are between 16 and 17: “So I would say 30 percent of prostitutes in Ukraine are underage. …Street kids get attracted to this. They get fed, they get cleaned, they are warm; some think it’s one of the better things that has happened to them.” Konchenkova has had many cases where children became upset when they were no longer wanted by pimps: “A 14-year-old girl told me in an aggrieved voice that she was considered too old to work in ****ography anymore.”

Konchenkova adds that the children’s values are a problem. “When you ask [these girls] where they see themselves in 10 years, they say a nice house, a floor-length dress, an expensive car,” she says. “They see Western commercials of luxury life and they want it. At the same time these girls get only threes [C’s] at school, so they must change either their intentions or their attitude towards money.”

Women are drawn to accepting “dubious” proposals from traffickers by the desire to make money, provide for families and see other countries, says Katya Cherepakha, the social assistance coordinator at the international women’s rights center, La Strada Ukraine. An exacerbating factor is Ukraine’s relative poverty: The World Bank-estimated average annual purchasing power of Ukrainians is $7,000 per person, compared to $46,000 in the U.S. Women are also misled by lack of information about the true nature of trafficking and deceptive examples of successful emigrants. “Traffickers are getting smarter,” says Cherepakha. “They give a piece of true information—about the process of employment, for example—but all the rest of the information is not true.” Women who have a lack of familial support or problems at home, such as domestic violence, are especially susceptible to such offers.

In 11 years, La Strada’s helpline has received 38,500 phone calls, 64 percent from people applying for work overseas and checking on how safe a country is. But 4 percent are from people searching for loved ones, and another 4 percent are from family members trying to get help to trafficked relatives, ranging from paying for court cases to getting them to an airport.

Hutsol wishes Ukrainian women would be more suspicious of littleknown men making promises of any sort: “My own friends think that if they meet a foreigner they will have the perfect life. …But in reality they meet men, mostly from Turkey, who sleep with them, promise them the world and don’t even leave a phone number. That’s another problem with Ukraine having a reputation for beautiful, available women: Sex tourism isn’t always solely about prostitution.”

Pick up a copy of the Spring 2009 issue of Ms. on newsstands, or have a copy sent to your door by joining the Ms. community at www.msmagazine.com.

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Mit nackter Haut gegen Sextourismus
Die Mitglieder der Organisation FEMEN kämpfen gegen den Sextourismus in der Ukraine. Ihre Waffen: Nackte Haut, Strapse und Provokation. Anna Hutsol, 24, Gründerin der Organisation, zieht Bilanz nach einem aufregenden Jahr.
Fotoshow: Die FEMEN-Aktivistinnen in Aktion BRIGITTE.de: Die Mitglieder von FEMEN laufen in Strapsen durch die Innenstadt oder demonstrieren in sexy Schwesterntracht. Würde irgendjemand Ihnen zuhören, wenn Sie bloß eine Gruppe ganz normaler Frauen im Kampf gegen Sextourismus wären?

Anna Hutsol: Nein, ich denke nicht. Wir sehen das aber ganz pragmatisch: Wir wollen etwas Wichtiges im sozialen Bereich erreichen, und dafür nutzen wir die Mechanismen der Massenmedien. Und die springen nun mal an auf Humor, Show, Skandal, Erotik und Schock. Auf gewisse Weise verstehen wir unseren Protest als eine ganz eigene Kunstform – eine, die auffällt und beachtet wird. Wir haben auf diese Weise viel erreicht.

BRIGITTE.de: Wie reagieren Männer auf Ihre Aktionen?

Anna Hutsol: Ganz unterschiedlich. Gebildete, kreative und schlaue Männer unterstützen uns. Nicht nur mit Worten, manche nehmen auch als Schauspieler an Aktionen teil. Aber es gibt natürlich auch viele Männer, die grundsätzlich keine unabhängigen Frauen akzeptieren. Die glauben, wir seien bloß eine Gruppe von Feministen und grässlichen Hexen. Wir werden viel beleidigt und beschimpft. Aber das lassen wir an uns abprallen. Wenn wir darauf reagieren, begeben wir uns doch nur auf das gleiche Niveau.

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BRIGITTE.de: Was fordert FEMEN?

Anna Hutsol: Unsere Forderungen sind einfach und deutlich:
- Männer, die sexuelle Dienstleistungen kaufen, müssen kriminalisiert werden. Bislang ist lediglich die Prostitution illegal, nicht aber dessen Nutzung - das ist ein Paradox im Rechtssystem.
- Die Staatsorgane der Ukraine müssen das Problem des Sextourismus als solches anerkennen und eine rechtliche und morale Haltung dazu entwickeln.
- Ausländer, die bereits als Sextouristen auffällig geworden sind, dürfen keine erneute Einreisegenehmigung in die Ukraine erhalten.
- Das Strafmaß für Zuhälterei muss erhöht werden

BRIGITTE.de: Die Regierung der Ukraine hat trotz Ihrer Aktionen und Medienaufmerksamkeit in aller Welt mit keinem Wort auf Ihre Forderungen reagiert. Woran liegt das?

Anna Hutsol: Wir glauben, dass es innerhalb des Parlaments Gruppierungen gibt, die in die sehr einflussreiche Sex-Mafia der Ukraine verstrickt sind. Ein Hinweis darauf ist zum Beispiel, dass der Gesetzesentwurf von FEMEN für die Kriminalisierung von Freiern beim Parlament zwar angemeldet wurde, aber im letzten Moment unter seltsamen Umständen von der Tagesordnung verschwand.

Auf der nächsten Seite: Weitere zahlreiche spektakuläre Aktionen sind geplant

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BRIGITTE.de: Was können andere Europäische Länder tun?

Anna Hutsol: Das Mindeste, was ausländische Regierungen tun sollten, ist, ihre Bürger über die Situation in der Ukraine zu informieren. Viele Touristen wissen gar nicht, dass Prostitution in der Ukraine illegal ist. Abgesehen davon sollten Touristen sich bewusst machen, dass sie ins Blickfeld der Mafia geraten sobald sie sich mit einer Prostituierten einlassen.
Aber auch auf diplomatischer Ebene lässt sich vieles tun: Wir haben zum Beispiel einen gut funktionierenden Informationsaustausch mit der Deutschen Botschaft über deutsche Staatsbürger, die in der Ukraine in Geschäfte mit Sextourismus verwickelt sind. Diese Kooperation wurde von der Deutschen Botschaft selbst initiiert. Aber es gibt auch Negativbeispiele: Die Botschaft der Türkei verweigert jeglichen Kontakt mit uns - dabei sind türkische Männer nach unseren Daten die Mehrheit unter den Sextouristen.
Meistgelesene Artikel

Frauen der Woche

Moldau: Wie Frauen gegen Zwangsprostitution kämpfen

BRIGITTE.de: Nach einem Jahr FEMEN - was haben Sie erreicht?

Anna Hutsol: Wir sind stolz darauf, dass durch uns die ganze Welt von den Problemen der Ukraine mit Sextourismus erfahren hat, und dass ukrainische Frauen sich bereit machen, um sich selbst, ihre Ehre und die Ehre unseres Landes zu schützen. Auf unsere Kampagne "Die Ukraine ist kein Bordel" gab es zwar von offizieller Seite keine Reaktion, aber viele Verantwortliche sympathisieren mit uns und glauben an unser Potential.
FEMEN konnte eine Lücke füllen, eine nationale Frauenbewegung gab es in der Ukraine bisher nicht. Wir haben heute etwa 500 aktive Mitglieder, weitere 23.000 junge Frauen in der Ukraine stehen über das Internet mit uns in Kontakt, und unsere offizielle Registrierung als Frauenrechtsorganisation steht kurz bevor. Für den Sommer sind zahlreiche spektakuläre Aktionen geplant. Wir träumen davon, die größte und einflussreichste Frauenbewegung in Europa zu werden.

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Female rights activists take part in a May 22 protest in Kiev, denouncing prostitution and sex tourism.
Stringer/REUTERS


Ukraine's other crisis: Weak currency, cheap flights spur 'sex tourism'
In a country hit hard by economic downturn, the industry is expected to double to $1.5 billion this year.
By James Marson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 13, 2009 edition

Print this Letter to the Editor Republish Email and shareE-mail newsletters RSS
Kyiv, Ukraine - When Tonya came to Kyiv (Kiev) from her small hometown in western Ukraine to study, it was a route out of the dreary provincial life she had grown to hate. She struggled to make ends meet. Her parents, with a combined monthly income of around $200, were hardly in a position to help fund her studies.

Tonya feared she would have to give up and return home. But then she found a way to stay: selling her body to foreign men.

"My choice was to work as a prostitute or go home," she says, glancing around nervously. "I would never have done it but for the circumstances. I don't want to work as a prostitute, but I need to get an education so I can get a decent job."

Tonya is one of thousands of women who are part of an industry that has boomed in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: sex tourism.

The problem is already so acute that Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's interior minister, declared on national television earlier this year that "The country is becoming a paradise for sex tourism before our eyes."

And with the economic crisis hitting Ukraine harder than most countries in Europe – unemployment has soared by more than 50 percent in the past year – rights groups are concerned that desperation is causing more women to make decisions like Tonya's.

"The problem was bad before the crisis, but now it's booming," says Anna Hutsol, head of the nongovernmental women's rights group FEMEN.

Ms. Hutsol says that foreign men are taking advantage of the fall of the national currency, the hryvna, which has lost around 40 percent of its value against the dollar and the euro since the start of the crisis. They are also attracted by the visa-free regime for US and EU citizens introduced in 2005, and the advent of cheap flights from EU countries.

Police predict doubling of sex industry to $1.5 billion

The number of visitors to Ukraine has surged in recent years – last year alone saw an increase of 2 million – and although there is no way of tracking them, both the authorities and rights groups note that the number of sex tourists is mushrooming.

A police estimate in February forecast that the sex industry is set to more than double in value, going from $700 million in 2008 to $1.5 billion this year.

Some hotels are, as Hutsol puts it, "basically brothels" – last year saw two concierges arrested at two of the city's elite hotels for allegedly helping guests find prostitutes. Dozens of websites play on Ukrainian women's reputed beauty, advertising girls with price lists for the "services" they offer as well as testimonies from clients. They also offer tips to get girls past hotel security late at night.

Many websites peddle the myth that prostitution is legal in Ukraine. It isn't, but punishment is meted out only to prostitutes themselves – not clients – in the form of fines ranging from $6 to $30. A bill introduced in parliament in February proposing fines for clients was quietly dropped.

"No one cares about us," says Tonya. "What I'm most frightened of is that it will never end."

More subtle forms, too

Not only do the police lack the legal means to tackle the problem, Kyiv's police chief charged this past winter that some also provide "cover" for prostitutes and brothel owners.

"We have information that [brothels] are 'protected' by police officers," said Vitaliy Yarema in December. "When you drive along the street and see prostitutes, I am sure that this is impossible without [the help of] the police."

There are concerns that the authorities are not taking the problem seriously. Mykhailo Andrienko, head of the interior ministry's department for combating human trafficking, says that "statistics show" that prostitution is on the wane because potential clients can't afford to pay. He declined to give specific figures, and added that sex tourism "is not as big a problem as people think."

But Hutsol says prostitution is not limited to those advertising themselves as such.

Visit any one of the bars and clubs in downtown Kyiv frequented by expats and the likelihood is high of encountering scantily clad girls.

"It often starts off with a cocktail, then dinner," says Hutsol. "Then, before she knows it, the girl is in bed. She has become a prostitute without even recognizing it herself."

Some haunts are renowned for their "ladies' nights," where women can enjoy free drinks with no men around, before the horde is unleashed later in the evening.

"Foreigners take advantage of girls' poverty and lack of education," says Hutsol, who says Ukraine never experienced women's emancipation. "Why book a prostitute when you can just buy a student a cocktail and promise to take her to Paris?"

2 in 3 young women offered sex by a foreigner

A survey last autumn by FEMEN revealed that an astonishing 67.5 percent of women in Kyiv between 17 and 22 had received an offer from foreigners of money for sex. And with the Euro 2012 soccer tournament fast approaching, when thousands of male fans are expected to descend on the country, concerns that the problem is not being taken seriously enough by the authorities or society led FEMEN to take to the streets to draw attention to the problem.

FEMEN, which was founded last year and is mostly made up of students, has organized a number of colorful protests in Kyiv's main square, with girls dressed up as prostitutes holding signs in English, German, and Russian reading, "Ukraine is not a brothel," and, "Sex is not for sale."

At a protest on Sunday, the participants ignored catcalls from a group of drunken Ukrainian men.

FEMEN hopes to spread across Europe to raise awareness of the human trafficking that has resulted in Ukrainian prostitutes populating brothels throughout Europe. But for now at least, the group has its work cut out in Ukraine.

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Dear Friends!
we from g2k support the femen initiative.


Now FEMEN has got it's account on YouTube and check out our first video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0XCUqPEykE


Please also see FEMEN-Patrol on ZDF
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/conte...6?inPopup=true
Love,
FEMEN

--
FEMEN Women's Movement
Ukraine
http://femen.livejournal.com/
http://vkontakte.ru/club2672464
http://www.myspace.com/femenukraine

Hi Sunshine!

Thanks for posting and excellent information on FEMEN activeties.
Reading it made me wonder why so much sex tourism and trafficking is taking place.
I'm from the London and a lot of people here see your country and Eastern Europe as not much. Some may not agree. One thing about the British, they tend to have the arrogance because who has money and do not.
Here in the west especially the UK, men and some women view Eastern European women as cheap sl**ts. The authorities is not interested in stopping these sex pests from going to countries like yours. I know that the government is only concern about money and themselves, but what are the men in Ukraine doing?...don't they seem to care about fellow Ukrainian women having this problem.
Shame on them!

Thanks Sunshine for the news.