An efficient recipe for more death: AIDS in India

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An efficient recipe for more death

AIDS in India

http://www.iht.com/articles/63940.html

Joanne Csete , International Herald Tribune July 10, 2002

BOMBAY: If the international conference on AIDS in Barcelona this week

wants to see how a country can spread AIDS from " high-risk groups "

into the general population, it should look at the recipe in India.

The first ingredient: Be sure that sex workers, drug users and men who

have sex with men are stigmatized and forced to live in the margins of

society. Denying their existence also helps.

Second, and this is key: Be sure that those who are brave enough to

work with these populations to prevent AIDS are also stigmatized,

abused and beaten by the police, thrown in jail on trumped-up charges

and accused of being enemies of the state.

A third ingredient is optional: Lie about the number of infected people

to make it look as though everything is well under control. The Indian

government says there are 4 million persons with HIV/AIDS in India, a

figure that most experts think is grossly understated. Since the

national AIDS program refuses to provide anti-retroviral treatment,

prevention is the only hope for the millions at risk of infection.

Partly because India is following the how-to-spread AIDS recipe to the

letter, it is now home to one of the worst epidemics in the world. The

organizations there that are fighting AIDS on the front lines among sex

workers and sexual minorities face frequent and violent harassment from

the police. The public health service of the government provides these

groups with condoms and in some cases money - and then sits back as

their work is undermined by police officers who abuse AIDS workers

with impunity.

Take the case of the aptly named collective of women in prostitution,

VAMP, in Nippani near the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. This

collective's work is internationally recognized for empowering sex

workers to secure condom use by their clients and for AIDS prevention

work. It distributes 350,000 condoms per month. The group was broken

up by local officials who violently ran its workers out of town.

Or take the AIDS educators associated with the Samraksha organization

in Bangalore. The police have beaten them, taken their condoms away,

accused them of drug offenses for which there was no evidence, and, in

one hideous incident, rubbed chili into their eyes and vaginas. Or the

groups in several states conducting AIDS prevention work with men who

have sex with men, whose workers have been rounded up, sexually abused

by police in detention and accused of undermining Indian culture.

An antiquated, colonial-era sodomy law, Section 377 of the Indian Penal

Code, is cited as justification by police as they arrest HIV/AIDS

educators who work with men who have sex with men. The Delhi High

Court is considering a petititon by Naz Foundation India Trust to

repeal this law.

The World Bank is the main funder of the national AIDS program, having

lent India more than $300 million for the effort so far. The terms of

the loan include ensuring respect for the rights of persons at high

risk of HIV transmission, but the bank has done little to ensure that

this provision is enforced. It is time for the government to make

protection of the rights of high-risk persons and those who provide

AIDS prevention services to them a centerpiece of its AIDS program.

Repealing Section 377 would be a good start.

The writer, who directs Human Rights Watch's HIV/AIDS and Human Rights

program, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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