HELSINGIN SANOMAT international

Helsinki prostitutes move to Vantaa

Back in September of last year, the City of Helsinki introduced tough new local ordinances on soliciting and on the consumption of alcohol in public areas. Street prostitution had caused a public nuisance and provoked complaints from residents in affected areas, and the excessive drinking and resulting urination at mass events in the city centre brought a call for a ban on drinking outside of licensed bars. The moves prompted immediate doubts that the police would have either the manpower or the will to enforce the bye-laws, which actually circumvented Parliament, but things have not worked out that way.
   One of the traditional “hooker alleys” of Kallio is now deserted on a Thursday night. Things quietened down almost immediately from the beginning of December, when Helsinki's new ordinance outlawed street soliciting by prostitutes. “The fines are so hefty, I guess it has worked”, said one taxi-driver.
   Worked, and not worked. The sex business is simply reported to have moved, to Vantaa and the strip between Tikkurila railway station and Hotel Vantaa. At least on the surface, Tikkurila does not seem to be much of a fleshpot on a Thursday night. Then again, few prostitutes would be out in their normal garb on a chill winter's evening. According to police, January is the quietest month, as it keeps drinkers and hookers indoors.
   A local taxi-driver points to the wall of the Anttila department store. A dark woman leans against it, while her colleague sits in a nearby car. No customers seem to be about. A police car rolls by, and shortly after it, another car carrying two girls.
   “Great that you came along. Has someone rung you about us, then?” asks the young Finnish woman, who calls herself Linda. Another shapely Finnish woman sits beside her in the car. From out of the other car calls a voice, speaking Finnish with a Russian accent. It turns out that both she and the woman standing by the store are Russian.
   The girls are delighted with the prospects of free advertising, and even offer to post up their tariffs for the photographer. Customers have apparently not yet found Tikkurila, to which five ladies of the night have moved their offices.
   The women report that at the beginning of December, when the new bye-laws came into force in Helsinki, there would often be three police cars following one another around the streets of Kallio. “It got pretty wild. They were clearly out to make an impression.”
   Linda confirms this in an aggrieved tone. “I got busted; fined FIM 600, since I've no income. But I intend to challenge it. I wasn't working. Had my civvies on, no wig, no nothing. I was in jeans.” She says the man in the car with her was a friend.
   The women claim that they have not posed a disturbance to anyone, and that the only conceivable annoyance would be the stream of cars kerb-crawling in the neighbourhood.
   In Vantaa sex on the street is a new phenomenon. So far the girls have a good relationship with the police. They've pointed out the parking restrictions, so the girls have periodically driven around the block and back. The change of scene does not appear to have materially damaged their income. They are concerned, however, that the new Public Order Act being drafted by the Ministry of the Interior could put a stop to the kerbside trade up and down the country.
   Current proposals within the ministry are for nationwide legislation on public drinking, public urination, and street soliciting, though the rules on the sex trade would be less stringent than those now in force in Helsinki. Here the bye-law expressly forbids the sale of sex in a public place, but in the planned new Act there would be a provision covering public disorder, and fines would be issued only if police warnings go unheeded and the disturbance continues.
   In any event, the girls are concerned lest their livelihood be snatched away, even though many say they are not planning to stay in the business long enough for the changes to come into effect. One aspect of the new law is that it would presumably overrule the Helsinki local ordinance, and if it merely bans sex sales that “cause a public disturbance”, then the girls may be making the trip back to the capital before very long.
   Another theory is that Finland will follow the Swedish example. When the buying of sex was criminalised in Sweden a year ago, the trade went indoors and online. The internet and the mobile phone are doubtless also used in Finland. If everyone else is online, surely the hookers cannot be an exception?

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.1.2000

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