MEXICO CITY (AP) - A government body called Wednesday for authorities to investigate nightclubs that are advertising home delivery of table dances and other services amid the crackdown on large public gatherings and nonessential services during the coronavirus pandemic.
The National Human Rights Commission said the offerings violate both the health campaign and women’s rights.
“This is an attack not only on the right to public health, but also constitutes discrimination and possible human trafficking for sexual exploitation,” the commission said in a statement.
The National Citizen’s Observatory of Feminicide said Tuesday that table dance take-out services are being offered by “men’s clubs” that have been linked to allegations of sexual trafficking of women. It said some of the clubs that were ordered closed March 26 to stem the spread of the coronavirus have taken to offering home delivery.
Women involved in such activities “are being exposed not just to being infected with COVID-19, but also to different forms of violence,” the group said in a statement.
Some of the clubs have been implicated in the sexual exploitation of underage girls.
The rights commission said the practice had been detected since April 3 in the central state of Tlaxcala, which has had a longstanding problem of sex trafficking. Pimps in some towns in Tlaxcala have forced women into prostitution by entering into sham marriages, isolating them and threatening to take their children away.
As of Wednesday evening, Mexico has recorded 3,181 coronavirus cases and 174 deaths.
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