| |
| |
| |
|
Egypt: Stop Criminalizing HIV |
|
|
|
|
Friday, 08 February 2008 |
HIV-Motivated Arrests and Convictions Threaten Justice and Public Health
(New York, February 5, 2008) – A series of arrests in Cairo sparked by
one man’s admission to police that he was HIV-positive endangers public
health as well as human rights, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch called on Egyptian authorities to overturn the
convictions of four men for the “habitual practice of debauchery,” and
to free four others who are held pending trial. The government should
end arbitrary arrests based on HIV status and take steps to end
prejudice and misinformation about HIV/AIDS.
“These shocking arrests and trials embody both ignorance and
injustice,” said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt threatens
not just its international reputation but its own population if it
responds to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with prison terms instead of
prevention and care.”
The arrests began in October 2007, when police stopped two men having
an altercation on a street in central Cairo. When one of them told the
officers that he was HIV-positive, police immediately took them both to
the Morality Police office and opened an investigation against them for
homosexual conduct. The two men told human rights defenders that they
were slapped and beaten for refusing to sign statements the police
wrote for them. They spent four days in the Morality Police office
handcuffed to an iron desk, sleeping on the floor. Police later
subjected the two men to forensic anal examinations designed to “prove”
that they had engaged in homosexual conduct.
Human Rights Watch has documented that such examinations to detect
“evidence” of homosexuality are not only medically spurious but
constitute torture.
Police then arrested two more men because their photographs or
telephone numbers were found on the first two detainees. Authorities
subjected all to HIV tests without their consent. All four are still in
detention, pending prosecutors’ decision on whether to bring charges of
homosexual conduct. The first two arrestees, who reportedly tested
HIV-positive, are being held in a Cairo hospital, handcuffed to their
beds and only unchained for an hour each day.
Meanwhile, police apparently placed the apartment where one of the men
had lived under surveillance. On November 20, two days after a new
tenant had assumed the lease, police raided the apartment and detained
four other men.
According to the arrest report, the men were fully dressed and were not
engaging in any illegal acts at the time of the arrests. However, all
were charged with homosexual conduct, apparently solely on the basis
that they were found in a dwelling formerly occupied by one of the
earlier detainees.
People who have spoken to the four men since their arrest told Human
Rights Watch that a non-commissioned officer in the police station beat
one detainee on the head several times. Police allegedly forced the
four men to stand in a painful position for three hours with their arms
lifted in the air. They were provided no food, drink, or blankets
during their first four days of detention. Authorities also tested
these men for HIV without their consent. One of the men reportedly said
that the prosecutor, when informing him that he had tested positive for
HIV, told him: “People like you should be burnt alive. You do not
deserve to live.”
A Cairo court convicted these four men on January 13, 2008 under
Article 9(c) of Law 10/1961, which criminalizes the “habitual practice
of debauchery [fujur] – a term used to penalize consensual homosexual
conduct in Egyptian law. According to defense attorneys, the
prosecution based their case only on coerced and repudiated statements
taken from the men, and neither called witnesses nor produced other
evidence to counter the men’s pleas of not guilty. On February 2, 2008,
a Cairo appeals court upheld their one-year prison sentence. One of
them is held in a Cairo hospital, chained to his bed 23 hours a day.
“These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that
HIV is not a condition to be treated but a crime to be punished,” said
Long. “HIV tests forcibly taken without consent, ill-treatment in
detention, trials driven by prejudice, and convictions without evidence
all violate international law.”
In private letters sent to the Egyptian Public Prosecutor, Counselor
Abdel Meguid Mahmoud Abdel Meguid, on November 29, 2007 and on January
8, 2008, Human Rights Watch expressed its grave concern about the
arrests and their consequences for Egypt’s efforts against HIV/AIDS.
Human Rights Watch urged authorities to drop the charges, end the
practice of chaining detainees in hospital, and ensure that the men
receive the highest available standard of medical care for any serious
health conditions. It also urged Egypt to undertake training for all
criminal-justice officials on medical facts and international human
rights standards in relation to HIV, and to halt immediately all
testing of detainees without their consent.
Criminalizing consensual, adult homosexual conduct violates human
rights protections to individual privacy and personal autonomy under
international law. The apparent use of Article 9(c) in these cases to
detain people on the basis of their declared HIV status, and to test
them without their consent for HIV infection, also violates those
international protections, and the right to bodily autonomy.
International human rights law clearly affirms that prisoners and
detainees retain the absolute right to protection against torture and
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment – and enjoy the
right to the highest attainable standard of health, as guaranteed in
Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, to which Egypt has been party since 1982.
For more information you can read the March 2004 Human Rights Watch report, “In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct.”
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
Global Network of People living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+)
P.O. Box 11726
1001 GS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T +31 20 423 4114
F +31 20 423 4224
E
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Creative Commons License unless noted otherwise.