Brussels sex workers urge more police patrols after murder of young woman

Sex workers in the area around the North train station in Schaerbeek want the police to patrol the neighbourhood around the clock.

The calls for more police protection follow the murder of a 23-year-old sex worker on Tuesday morning. Some 150 sex workers have since gone on strike in solidarity with the victim, who died of multiple stab wounds and whose identity hasn’t been disclosed, and to protest their unsafe working conditions.

They say that increased and open drug trafficking has created a volatile, dangerous atmosphere for sex workers in the North station area, particularly for those women who aren’t in the country legally.

“I wonder whether the police themselves aren’t scared,” Caroline Larock, a social worker at Espace P, an organization that defends the Brussels interests of sex workers, told Bruzz. “There is a police station, but the officers barely leave it.”

The Brussels prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the murder of the 23-year-old, Nigeria-born woman, whose body was found on the pavement in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Police are still looking for the killer.

This is the second murder of a Brussels sex worker in one month.

Photo: ILLUSTRA / Belga