Julie Bindel Julie Bindel

Good riddance to Amsterdam’s disgraceful red-light district tours

The city of Amsterdam is to finally ban guided tours around its most notorious window brothel area, the sex tourist trap known as De Wallen. Since Holland legalised its already burgeoning sex trade back in the year 2000, it has become apparent that if you display women in windows, wearing nothing but a bikini and a fake smile, and market them like pieces of meat, that is how they will be treated by those that flock into the area to have a laugh at the human zoo.

I have been in and out of Amsterdam on dozens of occasions reporting on its absolutely abhorrent prostitution market. Walking around De Wallen, at whatever time of the day or night, I always bump into a tour group being told how ‘brilliantly’ legalisation works for the women and the rest of Dutch society. They are spoon-fed such a sanitised version of what really goes on in those brothels that you would honestly think they were talking about investment banking.

The tours have raked in millions, and are seen as harmless fun.

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