British sex workers took to the streets of London over the weekend to push for justice in the case of Agnes Wanjiru who was murdered by a British soldier in 2012.
The workers who were mostly wopmen drawn from three sex worker organizations; Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM), ECP (English Collective of Prostitutes) and the AAWG (All African Women’s Group, the cocottes camped outside the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence headquarters in solidarity with Agnes.
“Agnes Wanjiru was a mother supporting a young child. Her heartbreaking death is a stark reminder that our lives do not matter to those in power,” one of the protesters said in the event live-streamed on the internet.
“We are here to demand justice for Wanjiru, for the British soldier to be extradited in Kenya to face the Kenyan court and for the decriminalization of sex work,” she added.
This happened as December 17 marked the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
Agnes, who was murdered by a British soldier in Nanyuki in 2012, was a member of a local sex workers’ organisation and Laikipia Peer Educators.
Wielding red umbrellas and posters of Agnes labelled ‘They are literally getting away with murder’, the group was heard chanting ‘No bad woman, just bad laws’ and ‘outlaw poverty not prostitution’.
‘Don’t put us on the street, it’s 10x more dangerous’, ‘Tunataka haki ya Agnes Wanjiru sasa!’ other placards read.
The group also complained of what it termed as crackdown by moralists, ‘feminists’ and police, saying that such action put their lives in danger.
