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Friday, 13 July 2007 01:00 |
 Authorities announced a major crackdown on organized crime in Amsterdam's Red Light District yesterday , for the first time allowing national police investigators and tax authorities to see the extent of what had long been seen as a local problem.
With its scantily clad prostitutes posing in brothel windows and coffee shops oozing the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke, the area's seediness has always been part of its attraction.But the district is a magnet for petty criminals and, authorities believe, human traffickers, drug lords, and mobsters who take advantage of the situation to launder money. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, and coffee shops are licensed to sell small amounts of marijuana. But prostitutes don't have cash registers and drug vendors don't give receipts, making it easy for them to launder money for crime lords. |
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Wednesday, 27 June 2007 01:00 |
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 Alida Bosshardt, who spent more than 50 years working for the Salvation Army and established a center in Amsterdam's Red Light District for sex workers and drug addicts, has died. She was 94.
Bosshardt died Monday, Salvation Army spokeswoman Hella van der Schoot said. "She had heart troubles and kidney problems," she said.
Bosshardt joined the Salvation Army in 1934 and was instructed to work with women in the Red Light District shortly after the end of World War II. She established a "Goodwill" center in the district that eventually became a place where troubled people came for shelter and social services - prostitutes and their children, the homeless and drug addicts.
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Sunday, 03 June 2007 01:00 |
 At several locations in Amsterdam naked women and men posed for Spencer Tunick, the famous American photographer who likes to take pictures of naked people.
This time two-thousand men and women posed nude. Tunick snapped a series of photos of groups at different places in the city.
The first and biggest tableau was set in a parking garage, with people lining the railings of the twin, circular towers, looking from a distance like colorful stripes against the white building and overcast sky.
A smaller group of women picked from the larger bunch posed on bicycles on a canal bridge.
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Friday, 30 March 2007 18:00 |
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 Amsterdam's sex workers came to work early today to offer a free look into their business in the red-light district.
Hundreds of wide-eyed visitors queued in the sunshine to enter the dimly-lit sex clubs and peep shows that draw thousands to the city and to snoop around sex workers' neon-lit boudoirs.
“I think the open day is a great idea,” said Love, an erotic dancer at Amsterdam's Banana Bar, who was on hand to answer questions and pose for photographs.
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Friday, 29 December 2006 01:00 |
 Owners of Amsterdam brothels in the red light district are taking the city council to court over its decision to close a number of sex businesses and brothels in amsterdam.
Amsterdam's mayor says the sex industry attracts criminality.
The council is demanding the closure of 33 brothels, which account for around a third of the district's sex businesses, by the end of the year (2006).
The sex workers union says the move will force many women to work illegally.
Prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands five years ago. |
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