PROSTITUTION IN OMAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MUSCAT 000138

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/ARP, G/TIP, AND DRL
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR FOR JAMES RUDE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/13/2018
TAGS: PHUM PREL KCRM KWMN SMIG ELAB KMPI MU
SUBJECT: PROSTITUTION IN OMAN

REF: MUSCAT 43

Classified By: Ambassador Gary A. Grappo for Reasons 1.4 b/d


1. (C) Summary: Contacts suggest that prostitution,
particularly among women working in massage parlors and
dance clubs, is a growing problem in Oman. The Royal Oman
Police (ROP) has arrested and deported women for engaging
in prostitution, but the government has not prosecuted to
date any alleged brothel owners or recruiters for
facilitating the sex trade. The government claims that
there is no evidence of human trafficking among
prostitutes; however, contacts in foreign missions tell
poloff that some of their nationals have been subjected to
sexual exploitation. End summary.

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Background
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2. (C) Prostitution is a taboo topic in Oman, and the
government rarely provides official information on
prostitution or related issues. The lack of information
makes it exceedingly difficult to gauge the actual size or
nature of the commercial sex trade in Oman. Contacts among
expatriates and non-official Omanis tell poloff, however,
that commercial sexual transactions are occurring in
hotels, bars, brothels, and in some massage parlors and
health clubs that increasingly have appeared in certain
cities in Oman in recent years. The majority of women
allegedly involved in the sex trade are from China,
Morocco, Eastern Europe, India and South Asia. There also
are some Omani prostitutes, contacts say; veiled Arab women
reportedly often demand a higher price on the market.

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Prostitution as Choice?
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3. (C) While a few government officials privately admit
that commercial sexual transactions take place, they
contend that prostitution does not pose a major criminal or
social problem. Assistant Attorney General for Technical
Affairs, Mohammad Darwish al-Shidi, told poloff that the
Public Prosecutor initiated only 24 prostitution cases in
2006, many of which the government eventually dropped for
lack of evidence. Most of the cases were against
individual women, the majority of whom were registered as
maids, he said, who had "chosen" to engage in prostitution
as a way to increase their monthly income. Al-Shidi said
that there has been no evidence to date to suggest that
criminal networks are running prostitution rings or that
women are the victims of human trafficking for sexual
exploitation. If there had been such evidence, he stated,
the government would have charged those responsible under
Articles 220-222 of the Penal Code, which assign a prison
sentence of up to five years for those found guilty of
forcing a women to have sex with a third party or earning a
living off of her prostitution. Finally, he opined, if
there had been strong evidence of trafficking, the Public
Prosecutor would have handled the case as one of
enslavement under Article 260, which carries a prison
sentence of up to 15 years.

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Claims of Exploitation
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4. (C) Diplomats from some labor exporting countries tell
poloff that some of their nationals have claimed to be
victims of forced prostitution and sexual exploitation.
These women's claims of abuse, however, rarely result in
formal charges against their pimps or employers, the
diplomats say. Suhod Sinsuat, Administrative Officer and
Attache (protect) in charge of assistance to Philippine
nationals, told poloff of a 2006 case in which a woman who
was working legally in Oman as a maid claimed that a man
abducted her from in front of her sponsor's house and
forced her to work as a prostitute in a Muscat brothel.
The woman finally ran away to the embassy's safe house and
recounted that she had been forced to have sex with clients
seven to eight times per day for five Omani Riyals (USD 13)
per encounter. The women further claimed that the owner of
the brothel never paid her. Sinsuat said that the
Philippine Embassy reported the woman's story to the ROP,
which investigated the claim, detained the brothel managers
and eventually closed down the brothel. However, Sinsuat
declared that the ROP never formally arrested the managers
or owners of the brothel, and that the government did not

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pursue the charges against them for their activities. As
the case languished, the Philippine Embassy eventually
repatriated the woman, and the Omani government dropped
charges because the claimant had left the country.

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Alleged Exploitation in Massage Parlors...
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5. (C) Diplomats in other foreign missions also have
informed poloff of claims of sexual exploitation,
particularly among some women who work as masseuses in
health clubs and as dancers in hotel bars, which many
contacts claim may act as fronts for prostitution.
Naddaphong Lathapipat (protect),a consular and welfare
officer in the Embassy of Thailand in Muscat, estimated
that during 2007, an average of two Thai women per week
sought shelter at the Thai Embassy's safe house, each with
similar stories of abuse. The women, he said, claimed that
recruitment agencies in Thailand had promised them jobs in
clinics or tourist resorts as masseuses with good
salaries. They then traveled to Oman as tourists with the
promise that their Omani employers would get them a work
visa once they were in country. The women reported that
their prospective employers - both Omani and expatriate -
generally met them at the airport and took their passports,
but never changed their visa classification to allow them
to work legally.


6. (C) The Thai women claimed that their employers and
customers used the women's illegal status as a way to force
them into sex, Lathapipat related, which customers
regularly expected during a massage session. If the women
tried to refuse, the customer or employer would remind the
women of their illegal status and threaten to turn them
into the police if they did not comply. Lathapipat also
said that some women reported being physically confined to
the massage parlors, often forced to work - providing both
massages and sex - without pay or time off.


7. (C) According to Lathapipat, the ROP has taken action
against some of these establishments, after which it
generally informs his embassy if there are Thai nationals
involved. For example, he said, in early December 2007 the
ROP raided and closed two massage parlors for prostitution
- one in the southern city of Salalah and another in Nizwa
in Oman's interior. During the operation, in which
officers posed as paying customers, Lathapipat said that
the ROP arrested four Thai women for engaging in
prostitution and violating Oman's labor laws by working
without an employment visa. The ROP detained the Thai
women, as well as a number of women from Morocco, Russia
and China, for one week before deporting them in
mid-December. Lathapipat noted that according to his
information, neither the owners nor the managers of the
massage parlor were prosecuted.

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...and Dance Clubs
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8. (SBU) Contacts say that women who come to Oman to dance
in hotel bars may find themselves in similarly exploitative
situations. Many hotels in Oman - particularly those rated
at three stars and below - have one or more bars associated
with them, a sizable number of which feature women (often
grouped by ethnic or national origin) dancing on a raised
platform. Customers in many of these establishments
reportedly can indicate their interest in a particular
dancer and pay a bar employee to have the woman focus her
attention on them while she dances.


9. (C) According to a contact who claims to have spoken
with multiple women who are working as dancers in these
bars, the process by which these women enter the country
makes them particularly vulnerable to abuse. In many
cases, he said, a recruiter in their country of origin can
pay the women as much as 1,000 OR (USD 2,600) up-front to
work as a dancer in Oman. However, the women have to repay
this amount to their employers through their earnings,
which they receive by capturing the attention of the bar's
customers. These women reportedly receive as little as 150
beza (USD .40) of each riyal (USD 2.60) that a customer
pays to have them direct their dancing towards him. They
often work from 9:00 pm to 3:00 am on weekdays and an
expanded schedule on weekends. The contact said that in
some instances, the women asserted that their employers
lock them in houses until the next day's performance, and
that some employers use their leverage to force the dancers

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into prostitution.


10. (C) A Moroccan diplomat told poloff that the ROP will
inform him on occasion that it has detained Moroccan
nationals in Oman as dancers on charges of prostitution and
illegal work. He said that most of these women, whom the
ROP generally deports after a short period of detention,
entered Oman on tourist visas or under a special
three-month renewable visa for members of dancing or
musical groups. These visas, he said, are approved by the
Ministry of Tourism and do not require the petitioning
hotel or bar owner to obtain a work permit from the
Ministry of Manpower (MOM). Their defacto status as
unregistered workers places the women outside the system of
complaint adjudication and legal redress that the MOM and
Oman's 2003 Labor Law can provide. These women may end up
working and living in the country illegally when their visa
expires, the Moroccan diplomat said, which makes them
particularly vulnerable - like the women in massage parlors
- to becoming victims of sexual exploitation.

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Imprecise Estimates
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11. (C) All of the diplomats with whom poloff spoke
estimated that the number of victims among their nationals
in Oman likely is small. They admitted, however, that
their missions do not know how many of their female
nationals may be in country at any given time, let alone
how many of them are possible TIP victims. Many of the
women working in dance and massage establishments do not
register with their respective embassies upon their
arrival, the diplomats complained. The Moroccan diplomat,
for example, asserted that he did not have statistics
regarding how many Moroccan women enter Oman under the
dance troupe visa every year. Further, despite stories of
abuse, his government had yet to approach Oman's Ministry
of Tourism to get these statistics or discuss the process
by which the Ministry issues these visas. The diplomats
also declared that some of their nationals enter Oman
illegally. A Chinese diplomat told poloff, for instance,
that there have been cases in which local agents brought
Chinese women into Oman via the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
with false visas and travel documents to work in businesses
advertising traditional Chinese therapeutic massage. In
several specific cases, he said, the women were deported on
charges of prostitution.

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Comment
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12. (C) The government of Oman asserts that it soon will
pass an anti-trafficking law that provides a national
committee with the mandate to establish a comprehensive
program to combat human trafficking (reftel). The stories
of prostitution in Oman raise a number of issues that this
committee could address, including: researching possible
links between prostitution and trafficking; and
investigating why the ROP and Public Prosecutor have failed
to pursue cases against brothel owners and those who
facilitate the sex trade. (Note: According to the draft
anti-TIP law, the Ministry of Tourism is not represented on
the national committee, which could complicate research
into how tourist promotion and services may contribute to
trafficking. End note.) The committee might also work
with labor exporting countries to develop strategies to
screen foreign workers who may be headed for jobs with
known links to prostitution.


13. (C) Given the government's reticence to deal with the
roots of prostitution in Oman, such an agenda will likely
take time to develop. However, a Ministry of Health
official seconded to UNICEF told poloff that the Ministry
has applied for money from the United Nation's World AIDS
Fund to conduct a sex workers survey in Oman. While the
Ministry's primary focus is on stopping the spread of
HIV/AIDS in a high-risk population, the study would be the
first official recognition that prostitution exists, and
could help provide a platform for dealing with it. End
comment.

GRAPPO