Austerity: The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy by Kerry-anne Mendoza

Author:Kerry-anne Mendoza [Mendoza, Kerry-anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: human rights, TTIP, welfare state, Conservative, privatization, Labour, Bretton Woods, Universal Credit, surveillance, MIT, police state, securitization, social housing, tuition fees, student loans, UKIP, financialization, Osborne, employment rights, Farage, zombie economy, civil liberties, corporate fascism, Free School, corporate power, IMF, immigration, Rogoff, structural adjustment, austerity, social democracy, State School, financial crisis, Incapacity Benefit, benefits, PFI, capitalism, Social Security, NHS, inequality, Bedroom Tax, New Labour, Cameron, Reinhart, Workfare, Private Finance Initiative, neoliberalism
Publisher: New Internationalist
Published: 2014-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Then they came for the sex workers and the addicts

The next group to face the wrath of the neo-Nazi resurgence were the sex workers and drug addicts.

Greece has previously enjoyed a low prevalence of HIV, but since the economic crisis new infections have skyrocketed; in 2010, the new infection rates shot up by 57 per cent. The blame has been laid at the door of drug addicts and sex workers, but these rises were entirely attributable to the Austerity crisis.

Austerity is driving ever more Greeks to drug abuse while cutting away the social safety nets that would manage and resolve their addiction. In 2010, heroin use grew by 20 per cent. In areas where the state-funded needle-swap programmes were closed, HIV infections among drug users shot up by 1,450 per cent. As the social security and healthcare systems fail after 40-per-cent budget cuts, some desperate Greek addicts are deliberately infecting themselves with HIV in order to access just $890 of financial support each month and admittance to a drug rehabilitation centre.34

Sex work is legal in Greece and largely managed through a ministry of state. However, since the economic crisis began, the sex industry in Greece has expanded by 150 per cent as the least enfranchised Greek women resort to prostitution to make ends meet. There are now a reported 20,000 unregistered, illegal prostitutes on Greece’s streets. There has been a rise in sexually transmitted diseases during this time.35

Rather than addressing the root causes of these issues, the government has instead demonized the sex workers and drug addicts themselves.

Greek police began raiding brothels and forcing sex workers to undergo HIV tests. In February 2012, the police published the names and photographs of 17 sex workers arrested and testing positive for HIV, branding them a danger to public health. One of the sex workers committed suicide as a result of the public shaming, unable to face her family.

The government has since passed legislation making it legal for police to arrest and detain all suspected illegal sex workers and test them for HIV without their consent. Any woman walking the streets can be arrested on suspicion of illegal prostitution, forced to undergo an HIV test and publicly named and shamed if found to suffer any sexually transmitted diseases.36

In this way, the police have extended the tactics used in Operation Xenios Zeus to their treatment of sex workers, drug addicts and the homeless – who have been rounded up and sent off to internment camps with the immigrants.37

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