The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. July 23, 2012 Sex Worker Conference Begins in India -------------------------------------- Sex workers and their allies have protested their exclusion by holding a separate conference, the Sex Worker Freedom Festival, in Kolkata, India. At the conference's opening on Saturday, Ruth Morgan Thomas of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects said the event was being held to include the voices of marginalized sex workers. bq. Ruth Morgan Thomas: "The Sex Worker Freedom Festival is organised because of the U.S. travel restrictions that prevent sex workers from all over the world going to the Washington AIDS Conference to participate, as we have done since 1988 when the conferences started. And we are here to talk about our rights–of sex workers, that are fundamental to us being able to end AIDS." .