Rights abuses fuelling HIV infection rates

Human rights abuse of injecting drug users and commercial sex workers in Kazakhstan continues to fuel one of the most rapidly growing AIDS epidemics in the world, Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared on Monday. "We are talking about an AIDS epidemic that is one of the fastest growing in the world," Marie Struthers, a researcher for the HIV/AIDS programme for the group, told IRIN from Moscow, noting that in 2001, Kazakh statistics had indicated an infection rate rising by 240 percent. "Many of the people we spoke to, including 80 injecting drug users, sex workers and people living with AIDS, said they were scared or reluctant to access information that could save their lives", due to pressure and harassment by the authorities, she said. Struthers's comments coincided with the release the same day of an HRW report documenting instances of violent brutality, lack of due process, harassment and stigmatisation, thereby driving drug users and sex workers underground and impeding their access to life-saving HIV-prevention services. According to the 54-page report, entitled "Fanning the Flames: How Human Rights Abuses are Fueling the AIDS epidemic in Kazakhstan" (see: http://hrw.org/), routine and sometimes violent harassment of injecting drug users and sex workers by police added to their already marginal status in the country. In a statement announcing the report's release, HRW said drug users could be arrested for possession of minute amounts of narcotics, as police found it easy to pin false charges on them, and became convenient targets when arrest quotas needed to be filled. "This is a carry-over from the Soviet period," Struthers said, adding that those subjected to routine police abuse also faced the threat of imprisonment. "Jail in Central Asia and across the former Soviet Union is one of the best places to contract the HIV virus," she asserted. Some drug users told HRW they were reluctant to use needle-exchange facilities even when they existed, due to fear of being detained or identified as addicts. Commercial sex workers, whose numbers had grown dramatically since the energy-rich nation gained independence in 1991, routinely faced rape, other forms of violence, and extortion by police, the statement added. This in turn raised the already existing levels of discrimination felt by Kazakhs living with HIV/AIDS in terms of abandonment by their families, discrimination in access to government services, and rejection in the workplace. Whereas Struthers conceded that the government had taken some positive steps in combating the disease, she reiterated the need to end all forcible HIV testing of detainees, and the segregation of HIV-positive prisoners. Moreover, it needed to launch a long-promised pilot programme of methadone treatment to help heroin addicts free themselves from their addiction. More broadly, the government should adopt an attitude of tolerance and respect for injecting drug users, sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS. The government "has taken a lot of the right steps," she conceded, "but it needs to increase and maximise them as fast as possible - otherwise it is at risk of losing the fight against this epidemic". Kazakhstan, Central Asia's second-most-populous nation, also has the highest population of injecting drug users. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's regional office for Central Asia in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, as of 2002, there were 47,241 registered drug addicts in Kazakhstan. In 1990, that number had stood at 4,948. While there are officially some 3,000 cases of HIV in the country, health experts believe the true figure to be 10 times that number. [For further information on HIV in Kazakhstan see: Focus on the battle against HIV/AIDS]