PHA-Exch> Urgent response needed! Sign-on Letter to Egyptian Ministry of Health on HIV/AIDS Arrests and Trials

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Scott Long longs at hrw.org

   As many of you know, Human Rights Watch has been closely involved in
campaigning against the recent arrests and trials of people living with HIV
in Egypt.    Attached (and pasted in the text below) is the final draft of a
letter to the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population regarding this
crackdown, and particularly the participation by Ministry doctors and other
medical personnel.  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are
sponsoring this letter, and wish to invite signatures of organizations
working on the right to health, including the human rights of people living
with HIV/AIDS



We would like to collect organizational signatures by close of business EST
on Friday, March 28.   The letter will be sent (in Arabic) and released with
a press release early the following week. (Verdicts are expected to be
announced in the latest trial in Cairo on April 9.



Please let me know if you represent a right-to-health or HIV/AIDS
organization that is willing to sign on.  Feel free as well to circulate the
letter.  And please send your responses to longs at hrw.org, by March 28.

 Human Rights Watch



*LETTER REGARDING ARRESTS AND PROSECUTIONS OF PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS*

* *

*Lead sponsors:
Human Rights Watch*

*Amnesty International*

* *

To: Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population



Egyptian Doctors' Syndicate



cc: National AIDS Program



Dear ...



We write you urgently to voice concern over the arrest and trial of men in
Egypt for alleged homosexual conduct, apparently based on men's suspected
HIV serostatus. We are concerned that medical personnel may have been
complicit, or actively participated, in acts violating the international
norm prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment.  We are further concerned that the Ministry's involvement with
the detention and interrogation of suspects in these cases condones or gives
credit to myths about HIV/AIDS, in a way that is incompatible with the
Ministry's public health responsibilities and can only contribute to the
epidemic's spread.



We represent xx human rights organizations and organizations working to
support the lives and rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.  We are
profoundly disturbed by these arrests and by the destructive attitudes they
display.   We urge you, as custodians of public health in Egypt and as
leaders in the national struggle against AIDS, to affirm in your statements
and, more importantly, to embody in your actions the reality that respecting
human rights is the way to protect health.



In the last four months, Cairo police have arrested at least twelve men in
an apparent campaign against people whom authorities suspect of being
HIV-positive.



This crackdown began in October 2007, when police stopped two men having an
altercation in downtown Cairo.   After one told the police he was
HIV-positive, police arrested both of them, charged them with the "habitual
practice of debauchery," beat them and coerced them to sign confessions, and
interrogated them to extract the names of contacts, thus beginning the
ongoing wave of arrests.

Doctors employed by the Ministry of Health and Population subjected the men
to HIV tests without their consent.  Doctors from the Forensic Medical
Authority forcibly subjected the men to intrusive, medically valueless, and
abusive forensic anal examinations to "prove" they had engaged in homosexual
conduct.   All those testing positive for HIV were held in Cairo hospitals,
chained to their beds, until February 25, when it appears that an order was
given to remove their handcuffs.  One man reports that a prosecutor
informing him that he was HIV positive told him, "People like you should be
burnt alive. You do not deserve to live."



A Cairo court convicted four of these 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 its case on the
coerced and repudiated statements taken from the men, without providing
witnesses or other credible evidence to support the charges, which all the
men denied. On February 2, 2008, a Cairo appeals court upheld their one-year
prison sentences.  Five more men were indicted on March 4 and face trial on
April 9.  Charges were dropped against the remaining three.

It is evident from this case that the Ministry of Health and Population has
failed both to protect the rights of patients under its care, and to help
ensure police and criminal-justice authorities do not act on the basis of
false information about HIV prevention and transmission.



We are grateful for the removal of chains from those kept in hospitals, as
well as the dropping of charges against a small number of those arrested.
However, we note that court files in the case initially contained a
questionnaire from the Ministry of Health and Population, titled "A
questionnaire for patients with HIV/AIDS."  It includes "yes" or "no"
questions evidently used by doctors from the Ministry in this case to gather
information from the men about whether they had sexual relations "with the
other sex" or "with the same sex," or "with one person" or "with more than
one person." Its   inclusion suggests not only that private, patient
information which should be confidential is shared with law enforcement, but
that it may have been used by the prosecutors as evidence against the men.
 Information gained from patients should not be submitted in a criminal
proceeding that itself violates human rights standards.





We recall that:



   - International law forbids discrimination on the basis of real or
   perceived HIV serostatus.  Detaining people on the basis of their declared
   HIV status and testing them without their consent for HIV infection violate
   the prohibition of discrimination and the right to bodily autonomy.



   - As Human Rights Watch has documented in its research on Egypt,
   forensic anal examinations to detect "evidence" of homosexuality are
   medically spurious, and, conducted without consent under conditions of
   incarceration, constitute torture.



   - Beatings and physical abuse of people in detention also violate
   international legal prohibitions of torture and other ill-treatment.   The
   United Nations' "Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health
   Personnel, Particularly Physicians, in the Protection of Prisoners and
   Detainees Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment
   or Punishment" state that it is a "gross contravention of medical ethics, as
   well as an offence under applicable international instruments, for health
   personnel, particularly physicians, to engage, actively or passively, in
   acts which constitute participation in, complicity in, incitement to or
   attempts to commit torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
   punishment."



   - Criminalizing consensual, adult same-sex sexual conduct violates
   Egypt's obligations under international human rights law to respect and
   protect individual privacy and personal autonomy. The imprisonment of
   individuals for actual or alleged consensual same-sex relations between
   adults in private is a serious violation of human rights, and individuals
   held solely on that basis are victims of arbitrary detention who should be
   immediately and unconditionally released.



We urge you to:



   - Support the setting aside of the convictions of four men already
   sentenced for the "habitual practice of debauchery," and the immediate
   release and dropping of these charges against all others still facing trial.




   - Seek a cessation of police and prosecutors conducting arbitrary
   arrests based on HIV status.



   - Call for the repeal of Article 9(c) of Law 19/1961, the enforcement
   of which only drives groups vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS pandemic underground
   and beyond the reach of prevention or treatment.

   - Ensure that personnel affiliated with the Ministry of Health and
   Population, or the National AIDS Program, neither condone nor participate in
   torture, ill-treatment, or criminal interrogations of detainees, and
   immediately report any instances of torture or ill-treatment to the
   appropriate authorities.

   - End the practice of chaining detainees in need of medical attention
   to their hospital beds.



   - End the practice of forcible HIV testing of detainees without full,
   informed consent.  Ensure that all persons who test positive for HIV receive
   appropriate and immediate counseling as well as treatment.



   - End the practice of forensic anal examinations for spurious traces
   of same-sex sexual conduct.



   - Ensure that all detainees receive the highest available standard of
   medical care for any serious health conditions.
   - Provide training to all criminal-justice officials on medical facts
   and international human rights standards in relation to HIV.



We look forward to your reply.



Sincerely,

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