I’m interested in the future of the Middle East after the oil is gone. Dubai already has very little oil.
Islam is very big on the protection of women, even at the cost of their freedom. Yet in a boom town where men outnumber women 3 to 1, prostitution is inevitable.
Mimi Chakarova has been doing investigative journalism into prostitution in Eastern Europe for the past 4 years. It led her to Dubai.
Her 12min video expose is both more surprising than shocking. It’s an honest report. And not at all what she expected …
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I met women working as prostitutes who told me that they were doing so because they had chosen to. Sasha, for example, was trafficked from Siberia and serviced clients against her will. But then she managed to run away from her madam and decided to continue to work as a prostitute on her own. Her English was good, so I asked her why she didn’t find a job as a salesperson in one of the many shopping malls in Dubai. She said she could earn more in one night as a prostitute than working a whole month in sales. And she wouldn’t have to stand on her feet all day. Like many other girls I spoke with, Sasha charges $500 dirhams per hour (about US$140). She told me that the money she sends home to Siberia has allowed her family to build a house.
I met another woman from Azerbaijan who was living with a “boyfriend,” the term she used to describe one of her regular clients. She told me how he would often lock her in the apartment to keep her services exclusively for himself. When I first met her, she talked about her son back home and how she had sent money to buy him his first computer. The second time we met, she was drunk and missing a front tooth. When I asked her what had happened, she shrugged it off: “We got into a fight, he punched me,” she said, lighting up another cigarette. …
FRONTLINE/WORLD . Rough Cut . Dubai: Night Secrets | PBS
You can see the video after the link above.
Rick McCharles 