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Swedish Call to Boycott World Cup Over Forced Prostitution

DW staff (sin)April 3, 2006
https://p.dw.com/p/8C1j

Sweden's soccer team should boycott the 2006 World Cup in Germany to protest against a feared rise in forced prostitution, the Swedish ombudsman for gender equality said Monday.

"We should distance ourselves and say that we will not accept such a situation and for that reason we do not want to participate," the ombudsman, Claes Borgström, told Swedish Radio. "It's a good opportunity to do something effective ... targeting modern-day slavery."

A number of non-governmental organizations have warned that up to 40,000 women from eastern Europe could be smuggled into Germany by criminal gangs to work as prostitutes during the tournament that takes place in 12 cities in June and July.

Prostitution is legal in Germany, where some 175,000 women are already involved in the sex trade.

"Maybe in 10 years, we will be remembered for having been the first to put a foot down and say 'no, we don't want to be a part of trafficking'," the ombudsman's spokesman Magnus Jacobson told AFP. "It could be 10,000, 40,000 women ... These are often women who have been grossly abused and who have lived in terrible conditions."

The deputy head of the Swedish Sports Confederation, Birgitta Ljung, said the ombudsman's boycott proposal was "extremely naive", Swedish news agency TT reported.

"That would mean that an entire country would be disappointed during the World Cup and in addition, we would probably be suspended from the next one," the head of the soccer federation, Lars-Aake Lagrell, told TT.