To disperse hookers, German border town will detonate stinkbombs

Some border towns tolerate prostitution with a blind eye (if not outright collusion with brothels), while others fight back against the streetwalkers who service the truckers, laborers and other dudes who fancy a quick BJ before heading home. One community on the Polish border of the former East Germany is clearly in the latter camp. From the Local:

Scantily clad Eastern European prostitutes have made a habit of gathering along the B1 motorway between Seelow and Müncheberg and near Beeskow on the B87 motorway. The trend is “nothing new,” the paper reported…

But [Vierlinden mayor Dirk] Illgenstein and other community leaders want to use “all available measures” to rid their region of the streetwalkers. Ideas include photographing johns’ licence plates and posting them online, and employing the use of penetratingly smelly butyric acid – which reeks of vomit and body odor and is often used to ward off unwanted wildlife.

Police have also taken the unusual step of issuing the women citations for endangering traffic, something Belladonna’s Ludwig told the paper was “pure harassment.”

“This is completely macabre and discriminatory, and reminds me of mediaeval witch hunts,” Ludwig said, adding that the women can earn far more cash in Germany than their hometowns. “Running the women off doesn’t help, they’ll just turn up somewhere else.”

According to the paper, “thanks to German johns,” some 1,500 prostitutes who come mainly from Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania, work in the German-Polish borderland.

While Ludwig alleges that the actions against prostitution have served only to calm offended residents, a spokesperson for the police precinct said she hoped further measures would make the women “disappear.”

Maybe it’s a translation quirk, but I cringe whenever a German official uses the word “disappear” in relation to a specific social problem.

via Border town plans to fight prostitutes with stinky acid – The Local.