A Report from the Ground Zero of China’s AIDS Crisis

The international community has praised the Chinese government for its recent change of heart toward the AIDS crisis. Whereas central authorities considered the epidemic a foreign issue just five years ago, Chinese leaders today acknowledge the severity of the problem and are participating in international programs aimed at the prevention and treatment of the disease. Journalist Pierre Haski who has spent time in the most affected Henan province, however, argues that the reality on the ground belies the government's lofty words. The miserable conditions in Henan, where an infamous blood-trade scandal in the early 1990s left thousands of peasants infected, warrant special attention. In contrast to the positive changes seen in Beijing, the government of Henan continues to downplay the extent of the disease and resist outside assistance. Inadequate measures, such as the distribution of pharmaceuticals with notable side effects, have been rejected by patients – leaving many without sufficient treatment and social support. "Until [the central government] brings assistance and justice to the victims of the Henan blood scandal," notes Haski, "it's too early to cheer Beijing's change of heart on HIV/AIDS." – YaleGlobal

A Report from the Ground Zero of China’s AIDS Crisis

Despite positive publicity, official Chinese help for the infected remains inadequate while foreign assistance is refused

Pierre Haski

YaleGlobal, 30 June 2005

	Lone vigil: A child sits by a dying mother in Henan, the ground zero of China's HIV/AIDS crisis

BEIJING: In a recent meeting with UN officials, China's Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the Chinese government is "determined and capable of curbing the spread of the disease (HIV/AIDS); to ensure the people live a healthy and peaceful life." China has indeed stopped playing the ostrich with head in the sand, but in the region where HIV/AIDS exploded, the old habit of secrecy still rules. With the government drastically underreporting the extent of the disease and resisting foreign help to fight it, thousands of infected Chinese are being left to further spread the virus and die unattended. Despite the public revelations of mass infections through contaminated blood, Henan residents continue to practice unprotected sex and send migrant workers to China's booming coastal region.

Only five years ago, AIDS was nowhere on the country's leadership radar screen. On World AIDS Day, December 1, 2000, the government treated reports about the epidemic as "foreign news." Nowadays, HIV/AIDS-related news appears regularly in newspapers and television. In a highly symbolic move – in China, the impulse still has to come from the top – the president and prime minister publicly shook hands with AIDS patients. Having made important commitments to address the AIDS crisis, the Chinese government now participates in international programs promoting both prevention and treatment of the virus.

The international community praised the Chinese government for its change of heart toward a world epidemic that is still far from contained, particularly in Asia. But as is often the case in China, there is a big gap between the central government's stated intentions and some of its provinces' real actions. HIV/AIDS provides a tragic example of this well-known characteristic of Chinese politics.

The central province of Henan, a poor, rural, and densely-populated region of 100 million, has been hardest hit by the virus – the result of an infamous blood-trade scandal in the early 1990s. Authorities encouraged Henan's poor peasants to sell their blood to collecting stations for industrial use. Residents still remember the slogan, "It is glorious to sell your blood." Also, the 40 yuan ( US$4.80 ) compensation was a welcome relief for low-income families. Tragically, no precautions were taken, and tens – probably hundreds – of thousands of these peasants, who had never heard of AIDS, were infected with the deadly virus.

The country's political system made a bad situation worse. My recent research shows that the authorities at local, provincial, and central levels knew everything by 1995: They stopped the blood trade, but did nothing about the mass contamination. Between 1995 and 2003, people living with HIV/AIDS were not informed of their infection, nor of the risks of contamination. Mothers gave birth to HIV-positive babies; existing treatments could easily prevented these transmissions. Meanwhile, adults – particularly migrant workers in the industrial zones of eastern China – continued to have sexual relations without any precautions.

When, as a reporter, I first visited the "AIDS villages" in 2001, people were totally ignorant of the plague that was striking their helpless communities: The disease had no name (They called it "the fever."), and the first peasant I interviewed asked if it was contagious. Visitors could meet dying patients who had received no treatment for lack of money, orphans taken care of by villagers' solidarity, and peasants with scars on their arms for selling their blood hundreds of times in the early 1990s – and wondering if they would be next to become ill.

When the first cases of illness, the first mysterious deaths, appeared, some Chinese doctors realized, often by chance, that something had gone awfully wrong. They were harassed and pressured to keep silent. The first Chinese journalist who reported the first cases of "mysterious illness" lost his job and became a kind of "political refugee" in the capital, Beijing. Things have changed since 2003, and these courageous doctors once considered subversives, like Dr. Gao Yaojie, a retired gynecologist from Zhengzhou, Henan's capital, have been rehabilitated in Beijing. Newspapers in Beijing and Guangzhou have been at times outspoken about the scandal.

But in Henan itself, what has changed since 2003? Unfortunately, not enough. Even the number of contaminated peasants remains unknown, and the ministry of health in Beijing laughs at Henan's official tally of 22,000. Dr. Zheng Ke, one of the Chinese doctors with the best field experience in Henan, puts the estimate at 300,000; others speculate the figure is closer to 500,000 or even a million. No one knows for sure.

Officially, the government has started distributing free antiretrovirals, the treatment that can stop the progress of the disease. The leadership has granted free education for children of AIDS patients and help for their communities. In reality, these treatments have been inadequate; a majority of patients rejected them because of side effects, while others have been trying all kinds of medicine, including experiments from Chinese army research centers. Many have opted against treatment altogether – and anxiously wait for their death. Worse, some were abandoned, like one man I met who was clearly developing the disease and who had been left waiting for a month for the results of his blood test. In dozens of interviews last year, I did not meet a single patient who was correctly treated.

This medical chaos would be enough to justify outside assistance. But Henan authorities are adamant not to allow any outside presence. When I travelled to the "AIDS villages" last year, I had to arrive at midnight and leave before daybreak to avoid the militias formed to stop journalists and non-government organizations, both Chinese and foreign, from visiting AIDS patients. International NGO's like Doctors Without Borders, have seen their offers of assistance rejected by Henan and have opened in other provinces – Hunan and Guangxi – AIDS clinics which, in partnership with local governments, bring their valuable experience in fighting the epidemic in other countries. Chinese NGO's trying to organize orphanages for the thousands of Henan children who have already lost their parents have been violently chased from the province and their institutions closed. I was a witness last year to one such incident in the town of Shengqiu, and saw the children's panic as police surrounded the building in an aggressive way.

This leaves tens of thousands of Henan peasants without adequate treatment, without any social support, and having to face the hostility of authorities who fear retribution for their role in the contamination process a decade ago. At the beginning of this year, China organized a massive campaign of solidarity for the victims of the Southeast Asian tsunami and raised more money than many developed nations. This, as many victims of official neglect, political cover-up, and medical chaos are waiting in Henan to see the central government put its positive attitude in action before it's far too late. Until it brings assistance and justice to the victims of the Henan blood scandal, it's too early to cheer Beijing's change of heart on HIV/AIDS.

Pierre Haski is a Beijing-based correspondent of the French daily "Liberation, " author of "Le Sang de la Chine" (China's blood trade), ed. Grasset, Paris, 2005, and of "The Diary of Ma Yan," ed. Harper Collins, 2005.

Professor aids China’s nascent anti-smoking efforts

L.A. Cicero

Assistant Professor Matthew Kohrman with some of the cigarette packages he collected in southern China. The medical anthropologist has applied his academic expertise in China to help address its smoking epidemic.

In late 2005, Kohrman and a group of colleagues published the first smoking-cessation manual in China based on anthropological research.

Tobacco is big business in China, which is home to roughly 360 million smokers—more than in any other country. It’s also a leading cause of death. This year, smoking-related diseases will take an estimated 1 million lives in China and be responsible for one of every eight deaths among Chinese men, said Matthew Kohrman, assistant professor of cultural and social anthropology. By 2050, if current trends continue, the figure is expected to jump to one-in-three male deaths.

In China's traditionally patriarchal society, smoking is an activity almost exclusive to men, Kohrman said. Seventy percent of men over 15 years old smoke, compared to less than 4 percent of women. Smoking is regarded as socially unacceptable for women, although slight upticks have been recorded among young female urbanites who regard it as cool and glamorous. Among men, the habit is equated with success, strength and sociability. Alongside the country's emerging market economy, cigarettes have been used to facilitate and seal business deals. A common Chinese expression today goes, "Men who don't smoke will work in vain to ascend to the top of the world."

Organizing a campaign to stem China's looming health crisis is further complicated because tobacco has been the single-largest contributor to its national tax system in recent years, Kohrman said. The country grows one-third of the world's tobacco crop and manufactures one-third of its cigarettes. Although oil and petroleum have gained in importance, tobacco remains a significant contributor to the economy, particularly in southwestern Yunnan province—China's "tobacco kingdom"—where 70 percent of taxes come from cigarette production.

In comparison to efforts to stem AIDS, which has received a lot of media attention, government support and significant international funding to establish disease-prevention organizations, tobacco control languishes. According to the United Nations, fewer than 1 million people have AIDS in China, but more than this number will die this year from smoking-related diseases. "Tobacco is much more sensitive because it's such a big part of the economy," Kohrman said. "And even with the epidemiological tidal wave that is about to hit the country, it's not seen as that pressing."

Despite such obstacles, Kohrman has witnessed some positive developments as China vies to be accepted as a modern state. Last October, China ratified the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international treaty aiming to reduce global demand for tobacco products by encouraging countries to adopt anti-smoking measures. In recognition of that milestone, China again will mark "World No Tobacco Day" on May 31.

Kohrman, a medical anthropologist interested in "biopolitics"—how health and the human body relates to the formation of political life—has applied his academic expertise in China to help address the nation's smoking epidemic. Kohrman is the author of Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, a book examining disability in relation to modernity and state building. In late 2005, Kohrman and a group of Chinese colleagues published Striding Along the Road to Health: A Handbook for Giving Up Smoking. It is the first smoking-cessation manual ever published in China based on anthropological research.

"This is a health project, but deeply informed by my ethnographic work," Kohrman said. "I feel strongly that while doing ethnographic study, anthropologists can't just sit back and be flies on the wall and write papers about suffering. They have to do things to mitigate that suffering." Kohrman said his anthropological research benefits from his policy work and vice versa. "As a result of this project, I have credibility throughout the Chinese public health system," he said. Leading up to this year's "World No Tobacco Day," the manual was featured on Chinese state television in a national broadcast on May 29.

The slim paperback is based on research supported by grants Kohrman received from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. Developed in collaboration with the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the School of Public Health in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, the self-help manual offers a set of behavioral and conceptual tools attuned to Chinese social mores.

"There's nothing like this," Kohrman said. "There are other smoking-cessation manuals, but they are usually direct translations of foreign texts that make no effort at developing something more related to every day social and economic life."

In a trial run, 3,000 copies have been published and are being circulated nationwide. This fall, Kohrman will begin a pilot test in Kunming involving 400 smokers who want to quit. Half of the group will receive the book and will be monitored to see if the book helps them kick the habit.

The colorful handbook is loosely based on an English-language manual that was revised and adapted according to input from Chinese focus groups and tobacco control experts. A Kunming advertising agency created hip graphics, many in the style of Japanese anime, geared to the interests of the manual's largely male target audience. The book is endorsed by Hong Zhaoguang, China's leading popular health guru, and other prominent Chinese professionals. Colorful stickers printed with sayings such as "Smoking can cause bad breath" and "No Smoking" are included in the book. Actor Jackie Chan, an ardent anti-smoking advocate, is featured on the back cover crushing a giant cigarette over his knee. In an unusual collaboration between mainland China and Taiwan, Kohrman worked with a Taipei health foundation to secure copyright permission to use Chan's image.

Kohrman said the book is different from its predecessors because instead of merely listing tobacco-related health problems, it contextualizes the risks within broader issues of concern to society. "There are anxieties about rising health-care costs and the decline in health-care financing," Kohrman said. "Most families are not insured, the old state is gone and people have to bear the burden of health-care costs." For example, a 30-year-old smoker might already be struggling under the burden of covering health-care costs for his parents. "One can say, 'Hey, you're 30 right now and you can smoke for another 20 years, but then you'll get a disease and it will be very expensive,'" Kohrman said. "You can speak to issues they're already attentive to."

The manual also discusses how cigarette smoking incubates disease, Kohrman said. "Alas, people are much more attentive to communicable diseases; they really worry about pathogens moving from person to person." It also tries to dispel misconceptions, such as if someone has smoked for a number of years and then quits, his body experiences changes that could actually induce disease.

Kohrman knows the anti-smoking lobby faces a tough battle ahead. Tobacco replacement therapy and smoking-cessation clinics are in short supply across China. More people are quitting, he said, but then fall back: "There's a very fraught sense of self forming around quitting." Men think, "I'm a manly man because I can quit," and "I am weak and lacking willpower" if they fail, Kohrman said. "So there's a lot of self-loathing that's starting to occur."

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is expected to boost the anti-smoking lobby, Kohrman said. "There's been a lot of ongoing struggles within China's polity about creating the healthy modern individual," he said. The late Communist leader Mao Zedong, a heavy smoker, wrote essays in the 1920s about the importance of the healthy, athletic individual.

"The spirit of strong physicality has grown over time, and the Olympics is the most recent iteration of that: the importance of being internationally recognized as a strong, healthy state made up of strong, healthy individuals," Kohrman said. "This is the conflation of health and modernity. It's a foundational piece of nationalism."

Aids in China...

Gamma Aids village, Henan Province, China

China Aids activists 'harassed'

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News, Beijing

People with Aids in China still feel stigmatised

An international human rights group has accused China of continuing to harass Aids activists working in the country.

The report, by Human Rights Watch, says people working with Aids patients face intimidation and even imprisonment.

The report comes days after China published a new law to protect people with Aids from discrimination.

China's communist government may be changing its attitude to those with Aids, but it appears it is still deeply hostile to those trying to help.

According to Human Rights Watch, Aids activists working in badly hit areas of central China are regularly intimidated and have even been beaten up by thugs hired by the local government.

The report says local governments in central China fear publicity about their Aids problem will ruin the investment environment.

It also accuses the Chinese government of continuing to censor information that could help prevent high risk groups from catching the HIV virus.

It says websites that try to promote safe sex and educate intravenous drug users are regularly shut down.

China is thought to have about one million people with HIV.

The largest concentration is in the centre of the country, where tens of thousands of poor farmers contracted HIV through government-run blood buying schemes in the 1990s.

The United Nations says that without immediate action to educate the public, China could have 10 million people with HIV by the end of the decade.

Address both the spread and stigma of HIV, says Primate

by Rachel Harden

World AIDS Day: two nuns mark the international day at an event in Shenyang, China

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has urged Christians to be at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS. In a statement released for World AIDS Day (last Friday), Dr Williams said that Christians were compelled by God’s self-offering in the face of suffering to do what they could to treat the sick and to educate themselves and others so as to avoid further spread of the infection.

“This pandemic has reached alarming proportions, affecting and infecting many who have not the knowledge or the personal autonomy to avoid transmission. It is now women and young people who face the highest rates of infection; the most vulnerable who bear the heaviest burden,” Dr Williams said. Last year, an estimated 4.1 million people became infected, and an estimated 2.8 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses. “No Church has found it easy to confront the realities of this HIV crisis. We have struggled to balance the moral tensions inherent in preventing disease whilst maintaining sexual discipline,” Dr Williams said. The disease was not stopped “by our best intentions or even by marriage”: “each person must take responsibility for knowing their HIV status and making sure that others who may be affected also know their status.” The Archbishop also said that assuming that HIV was something that infected someone else was the first step towards allowing it to confer a stigma. He praised church leaders who had “courageously brought their HIV-positive status to the attention of their communities”. He also called on the Global Fund and other donors to recognise “the enormous contribution that could be made in fighting this pandemic with our ecumenical partners”. Dr Williams highlighted the AIDS conference, to be held in South Africa next March, organised by the Anglican Communion. On Sunday, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, defended his Church’s position on the use of condoms. Referring to comments made by the Prime Minister on Friday that the Roman Catholic Church should “face up to reality” and drop its ban in order to fight AIDS effectively, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said that the money should be used to provide more drugs and medicines. “I speak to bishops in Africa, and they told me that their dioceses are flooded with condoms, and they say it has meant more promiscuity and more AIDS,” the Cardinal said on Andrew Marr’s BBC1 programme Sunday AM. But he said that Pope Benedict XVI had ordered a review of the Church’s position on using a condom within marriage where one of the partners was infected.

The Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi, marked World AIDS Day by calling for an end to the indiscriminate distribution of condoms. He said that providing them without thought contradicted Christian principles of self-control.

The fight for labour rights in China’s cities

Huang Qingnan lies injured after he was attacked with a machete for helping workers fight for their rights

Brutal oppression of workers underlies China’s economic boom, writes Tim Shepherd

In mid-afternoon on 20 November labour activist Huang Qingnan was chatting to a friend outside his local shop in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, one of the epicentres of China’s spectacular economic growth.

Out of the blue, two young men approached, one armed with a machete. In the ensuing melée, Huang was slashed so badly that doctors expect him to lose the use of his leg.

Huang runs a centre which dispenses services to workers who are in dispute with their employers. His legal advice, offered on a “pay what you can” basis, to workers chasing unpaid wages or compensation for work injuries has made him powerful enemies among factory bosses and various “interested parties”.

The labour arm of China’s growing civil rights movement is known simply as “wei quan” or, literally, “to uphold rights”. People involved in it face a rising level of attacks.

On 13 November another labour rights activist, Li Jinxin, was attacked by thugs and remains in hospital as a result. The violence haunts and underpins the Chinese “economic miracle”, which has produced one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the world.

Li helped out at a law firm specialising in labour rights work. He was kidnapped and both his legs were broken in a vicious and prolonged beating after meeting a “client” outside the offices.

China’s rise as the “world’s factory” has been largely based on the exploitation of over 100 million internal migrants leaving poor rural areas to work in the factories and building sites of prosperous East China.

Detention

Their residential status in the cities is similar to Germany’s “guest workers”. They are only allowed to stay in urban areas while they are in work.

If a rural migrant is picked up by the police without the relevant papers he or she is transported home – usually via a 15-day spell in detention. It’s an arrangement that the bosses have found conducive to keeping wages low and workers on the defensive.

Huang, Li and other activists have been concentrating on publicising the contents of the new Labour Contract Law that will come into force on 1 January next year. One of its positive features is that it will make it more difficult for employers to dismiss workers.

The law was passed despite fierce and sustained opposition from multinationals led by the American Chamber of Commerce, who threatened capital flight.

A compromise draft was eventually approved by the National People’s Congress – China’s non-elected parliament – with the bosses reassured by the certainty that implementation will be lax, not least because China’s only legal trade union is constitutionally and legally bound to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

While this link gives the organisation considerable leverage in law drafting, the union has barely any influence on the shop floor. Local government officials frequently find common interest with capitalists and ensure that enterprise-level trade unions are run by management or their stooges.

The rare instances of union officials speaking out on behalf of workers usually leads to their being sacked or transferred. Workers who organise outside the traditional union structures face arrest and imprisonment.

Although there is no protection of the right to strike in China and freedom of association is banned, there has been a marked increase in strike activity, as workers have made good use of recent labour shortages and a growing awareness of workers’ rights to demand a living wage paid on time.

Independent unions are banned, but workers often form hometown associations that are sometimes capable of organising strikes. Occasions where these associations unite in strike action are increasing.

Militant

Since 2004, the Shenzhen government has twice been forced to raise the minimum wage to calm the militant atmosphere. Workers are also more likely to take employers to court and this has resulted in some important victories.

The latest attacks on labour activists are part of what appears to be a generalised effort by the rich and powerful to ensure that their profits are not threatened.

It is only a matter of time before an attack ends in a fatality. Activists frequently receive phone calls from anonymous thugs with the same message: “Stop helping workers to protect their rights, or we’ll chop you to death.”

Meanwhile Huang Qingnan remains in hospital facing medical fees of at least £10,000. Unions and labour organisations have arranged a solidarity fund.

Government In Burma Similar To Butcher Government Holding 2008 Olympics

Government In Burma Similar To Butcher Government Holding 2008 Olympics

Some Buddhist Monks in Burma have been killed and others are being sent to remote prisons for taking part in democracy protests.

This is reminiscent of the brutal crushing of democracy protests in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

China, like Nazi Germany in 1936 and Soviet Russia in 1980, was rewarded for this behavior by being selected to host the Summer Olympics.

In Burma, bloggers have risked their lives to get this story out.

Statement on Tibet from Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Behalf of The Elders

Statement on Tibet from Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Behalf of The Elders

The people of Tibet wish to be heard. They have long sought autonomy, and chosen negotiation and mediation as their means of attaining it. They now turn to protest. The Chinese government should hear their voices, understand their grievances and find a non-violent solution. That solution is offered by our friend and brother His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has never sought separatism, and has a..

Further protests, mass detentions, and new pressure to denounce Dalai Lama as crackdown intensifies

There have been further protests in the past few days in Tibet as the crackdown on the plateau deepens, with mass detentions in different areas and some monasteries encircled by troops. In some areas, including Kardze in Sichuan province (Kham) and Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), there are signs that the authorities are provoking further unrest and frustration by requiring local people..

Eyewitness accounts of Tibetan protests

The Washington, DC-based Radio Free Asia has compiled vivid eyewitness testimonies of the protests and riots that have swept across the Tibetan plateau in recent weeks, see: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/politics/2008/03/15/tibet_interviews/ "In the Tseko area of Amdo, the monks are continuing peaceful protests as of March 20. About 2,000 Tibetans, both monk and laypersons, are involved ..

Seven Questions: What Tibetans Want

The most vigorous Tibetan protests in decades have been crushed by Chinese soldiers and police. Tibet expert Robert Barnett explains why the most significant action is taking place outside Lhasa and what we can expect the Chinese to do next. Foreign Policy: What does the average Tibetan want? Is it independence, or a greater share of Tibet's modernization and economic growth, which has bee..

Jokhang monks make bold protest: transcript

On March 28, a group of 30 monks in Tibet's most sacred temple and place of pilgrimage, the Jokhang, spoke out to foreign press who were on an official tour of Lhasa orchestrated by Beijing. Images of the monks speaking directly to the journalists about the crackdown in Tibet's capital and the "lies" of the Communist Party were captured on film by the press and broadcast all ov..

Speaker Pelosi introduces resolution on Tibet

Speaker Pelosi, with the members of a bipartisan congressional delegation that met on March 21 in Dharamsala with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, introduced House Resolution 1077 on April 3 evening which calls on China to cease the crackdown, release protestors, provide unfettered access to journalists and independent international monitors to Tibet, and engage in a results-based dialogue with the Da..

Turning point for Tibet

Below is the complete article written by Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, the Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, followed by the version edited due to space constraints which appeared in the International Herald Tribune on April 3, 2008. In the last few weeks we have witnessed an uprising against the Chinese authorities' repressive policies on the Tibetan plateau, the likes of which we have not seen in ..

ICT-Germany receives major funding from RTL-television - 919,863 Euro for Tibetan refugee children

'Particularly in these days of renewed violence against the Tibetan people, the over nine hundred thousand Euros raised in the RTL Telethon 2007 has been more important than ever before to pay for the expansion of a Tibetan Children's village for Tibetan refugees children', explain RTL charity director Wolfram Kons and project mentor, German actor Hannes Jaenicke. The expansion o..

Eight Tibetans killed in Kardze: new phase in protests in Tibet

At least eight Tibetans were killed yesterday in eastern Tibet after armed police fired on a crowd of several hundred monks and laypeople after an incident in which monks were detained after they objected to an intensified 'patriotic education' campaign, including photographs of the Dalai Lama being thrown to the ground, according to reliable sources. State media confirmed the incident t..

International Campaign for Tibet calls on Dutch Olympic Committee to support Olympic Torch re-routing

In advance of meetings next week between the Executive International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Association of National Olympic Committees in Beijing, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) in Amsterdam has personally delivered a letter to the Netherlands National Olympic Committee (NOC), expressing ICT�s deep concern at the security risks and the risks to civilians of unrest related to t..

Straight Talk Makes Headway in HIV and AIDS

By Lin Gu

KUNMING, China - “I must have been the only fully dressed man to ever hang out in a gay sauna,” recalls Wang Ming, laughing. “No wonder everyone stared at me.”

Looking back at what he has been through since 2002, Wang can only laugh as he recalls the challenges he faced as a timid heterosexual entering what to him was the baffling world of gay men.

To break the ice, the bespectacled young man from the Yunnan provincial health education institute began playing chess at the sauna, handing out pamphlets and condoms to curious onlookers during breaks.

When the China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Project gave support to the health institute in 2002 to start intervention work in the homosexual community of Kunming, Wang did not know much about gay lifestyles.

He struggled to find even a single member of this somewhat invisible community here in the capital of Yunnan province in south-western China. Then the China-UK AIDS project office hosted an AIDS conference in Kunming in June 2002, inviting Professor Zhang Beichuan as speaker. As a pioneer in AIDS intervention work, Zhang invited readers of his national newsletter to participate in the conference. Not many came to the conference in the daytime, but many more sneaked into the hotel at night to collar Zhang.

In the end, 14 brave souls pledged to cooperate with Wang as volunteers for a fledgling project called ‘Colourful Sky’. They included Li Jinyong, who later became the team manager. Li and Wang joined forces to improve awareness in the homosexual community, and help it and government health officials reach out to each other.

At first, the sauna’s owner was not too happy to see the team. He feared that introducing use of condoms would draw unwanted attention from the police make his business suffer. But the owner’s worries subsided when in March 2004, the provincial government itself required that condoms be made available at all hotels and entertainment venues.

Colourful Sky has also been successful in installing AIDS-related billboards inside Kunming’s main gay bar, winning the owner’s permission after hard negotiations. The owner even agreed to have AIDS-themed gatherings in the venue, inserting AIDS prevention tips in the night show quiz. The winners get prizes such as condoms and lubricants.

Cooperation between Wang’s official institute and gay volunteers have not always been smooth, but joint efforts do pay off for all sides. The provincial health institute, for instance, coordinated a face-to-face meeting of the gay community and police, in which they discussed the prevalent problem of gay people being blackmailed. Police promised to do their best to respect a gay person’s right to privacy -- while also investigating the crime.

Since those early days, more and more have joined the group of volunteers, organising community events that can attract more than 200 members from all over the city as well as nearby counties. Local regulations require that any gathering of more than 100 people must have police permission, but the official status of Wang’s institute has convinced police to turn a blind eye.

In 2005, Colourful Sky’s activity centre was born, with 150,000 yuan (18,750 U.S. dollars) coming from the International AIDS Alliance. At the downtown drop-in centre, visitors leaf through newspapers and magazines, play ping pong, watch videos, and meet new friends.

A Personal Voyage

The centre is often short of hands. Thirty-year-old Qiu Feng, one of its four full-time employees, has his hands full organising events, handling media relations, editing the newsletter and helping manage volunteers’ work in promoting safer sex in gay hangouts during weekends.

“It was a car accident in 2003 that made me rethink my life,” he says, explaining how he joined Colourful Sky. He quit his east-coast job in 2004 and headed west to Yunnan, the province where many urban Chinese youth traditionally seek spiritual solace. In Qiu’s case, he says he did not know what exactly he was looking for, but was watching out for something that might move him. Another reason, he now admits, was that a strange place always sounds safer. For most of his life, Qiu had hidden his sexuality, burying what he calls “a sense of great shame”.

He first learned of Colourful Sky from an advertisement on the Internet recruiting volunteers for the centre. Despite the social work he had done previously, Qiu had never realised that there were volunteers whose sole job was to reach out to gay people. By volunteering for a gay organisation, Qiu feared that others might guess his true orientation, but nevertheless registered in August 2005. Within half a month, he was a full-time employee.

One day in October 2005, a man called Colourful Sky in a state of panic, on the verge of suicide. The hotline caller told Qiu he had had unprotected sex and was now noticing AIDS-like symptoms. During a marathon series of phone and Internet conversations over the following days, Qiu tried to convince the caller to take a blood test. “It’s hard enough to be gay in this society,” says Qiu. “Let alone be a gay person with AIDS.”

Finally, the caller agreed to take the test, on condition of anonymity. Qiu volunteered to check the results. “When the test came up negative,” he says, “I don’t know who was happier or more relieved -- him or me.”

An Unexpected Side Effect

AIDS, like homosexuality, remains taboo in certain regions of China’s mainland. But as the province with the fastest spread of the pandemic in the country, Yunnan has also been the fastest to come to terms with the issues it raises. Qiu and his colleagues now join weekly training sessions, tailored to grassroots communities, organised by the provincial Red Cross. Topics range from interpersonal skills to proposal writing.

In the beginning, some participants did feel awkward and some were even upset over mixing with homosexuals, drug users, sex workers and HIV-positive people all in one room, to discuss what they had just been taught.

But familiarity has grown during the weekly meetings, so that the more regular attendees now tease one another like old friends. At a recent session, says Qiu, everyone got involved in a role-play game called ‘Wildfire’, designed to illustrate the impact of the pandemic. A drug user and sex worker got the short straws: they had to act out the role of persons living with HIV. In their reflections right after the game, says Qiu, both actors broke down in tears. It was only a game, but for a moment both had put their feet in the shoes of persons with HIV, and it was a valuable lesson about discrimination for all involved.

More than 20 grassroots community groups like Colourful Sky have sprung up in Yunnan, mainly through the support of the China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Project.

The latest estimates by the United Nations and the Chinese government says China has some 650,000 cases of HIV, with new infections rising to 70,000 in 2005. But while HIV and AIDS takes deeper root, the pandemic has also had a most unexpected side effect in China – it has given voice to otherwise silent groups, as society rethink attitudes and age-old prejudices.

Governments, as well as the rest of society, have found that they have no choice but to listen. In March 2004, Colourful Sky co-founders Wang and Li were invited to talk on a provincial radio phone-in programme, where they openly discussed not only HIV and AIDS prevention but homosexuality and the little-known gay community life in Kunming.

Following the show, letters of protest immediately landed on the table of the programme producers. Seven more shows followed.