Four migrant sex workers, killed in Australia in recent years, were remembered in front of the Magistrates Court on March 18 at a vigil called by Rising Red Lantern.
“Yuko” was 62 when she was killed at the Rainbow Garden brothel in Footscray in November 2024. Michael James Chalmers has been charged with her rape and murder was facing the Magistrates Court that day.
Bee Charika, Rising Red Lantern founder and Asian migrant project lead at Vixen, Victoria’s sex worker organisation, said: “Our sisters were not statistics. They were not headlines. They were not just victims”.
Yuqi Luo, a migrant from China’s Hunan province, was killed in her own home by a client in December 2022. Korean migrant Hyun Sook Jeon was robbed and killed by the same man within 24 hours of the first murder.
Xiaozheng Lin, who killed Luo and Jeon, faced the Court of Appeal on March 16 as public prosecutors argued for a longer sentence. Jingai Zhang, who was killed in Launceston in 2020, has been in the news, as loved ones question why her killer Tobias Pick served less than three years for her murder.
“They were workers, they were migrants, they were friends, sisters, and part of our community,” Charika said. “They had dreams and their lives mattered.”
Damien Nguyen, from the Asian Migrant Sex Worker Advisory Group, said Yuko’s story is not an isolated incident.
“It is emblematic of the ongoing discrimination against migrants, women, and sex workers in this country,” Nguyen said. “This is not about the length of the sentence, it’s about truth telling. We know a murder when we see one.”
Vixen manager Gia Green said the broader pattern of violence against sex workers, especially Asian migrant sex workers, is “treated with less urgency, humanity, and seriousness than violence against others”. She said it reflects a deeper system of stigma, racism and state neglect that leaves our communities more exposed to harm.
“When institutions fail to recognise the full humanity and rights of sex workers, it creates conditions where perpetrators believe they can target Asian migrant sex workers with impunity.”