Word: kong
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...World of Suzie Wong was written today, it would likely be a horrifying whodunit that ends with police finding a semi-naked woman murdered by a suspected serial killer. Hong Kong, a metropolis relatively free of violent crime, has been shocked by a spike in murders of prostitutes including three sex workers who were killed in their apartments in January. The rising death toll is forcing the city's conservative leaders to consider how members of the world's oldest profession might be better protected under Hong Kong law. (Read about Amsterdam's drive to clean up its red light...
...killer was responsible. On Feb. 4, police arrested a local 24-year-old man in connection with the most recent killing, a 38-year-old from Thailand. The suspect remains in jail. "Enquiries are ongoing to ascertain whether the person arrested is connected to other similar offenses," a Hong Kong police spokesman says...
...Whether or not a serial killer is on the loose, the murders are part of a disturbing trend. Hong Kong, a city of 6.9 million, saw 36 murders last year, twice as many as in 2007. Six of the 36 were sex workers. In a particularly gruesome incident in May, 2008, a 16-year-old girl involved in sex trade was decapitated, flayed, chopped into pieces, and dumped at a local market where meat was sold. "We are very frightened of this dangerous situation," says Jade, a 40-year-old Hong Kong prostitute who declined to give her last name...
...Some policymakers, activists and scholars say these are crimes of opportunity - and that the law may be helping to create that opportunity. Prostitution is a shadow profession in Hong Kong. It is technically legal, but traditional brothels are classified as illegal "vice establishments." Landlords who rent a single premise to more than one sex worker can face jail time. This means sex workers are forced to operate mainly as one-woman businesses out of their homes. There are approximately 1,600 one-woman brothels in Hong Kong, according to the Hong Kong police. Operating in isolation and without protection, these...
...Simon Young, director of the Center for Comparative and Public Law at Hong Kong University, says the current laws were designed to cut down on organized crime and pimping - it's illegal for anyone except a sex worker to profit from the services rendered. But the code "is out of touch with reality," Young says. "A clearer law must flow from a policy change that recognizes the existing law hurts many innocent people...