Every once in a while my work puts me in the presence of greatness. It did so yesterday when I had the pleasure and privilege of working with South African Justice Edwin Cameron, the only public official in all of Africa to publicly state that he has AIDS. He is probably also the only openly gay official on the continent. Oxford-educated and a Rhodes Scholar, Justice Cameron’s contributions to human rights and AIDS awareness, and his personal courage, cannot be exaggerated.

Yesterday he spoke with reporters in Beijing about a recent Renmin University-UNAIDS survey [pdf file] on the attitudes of Chinese people in six cities - Kunming, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Wuhan, Zhengzhou and Beijing - toward AIDS and AIDS sufferers. The survey sampled four groups, migrant workers, blue collar workers, white collar workers and youth, and it provides some depressing if not especially surprising findings:

- More than 48% of respondents thought they could contract HIV from a mosquito bite, and over 18% by having an HIV positive person sneeze or cough on them.

- Around 83% of interviewees had never searched for information on HIV/AIDS.

- Nearly 30 % did not know how to use a condom correctly.

- Only 19 % said they would use a condom if they had sex with a new partner.

- Nearly 11% of respondents had had sex with people who were not their spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend during the past 6 months; 42% of those respondents had not used condoms.

- 30% think HIV positive children should not be allowed to study at the same schools as uninfected children.

- Nearly 65% would be unwilling to live in same household with an HIV-infected person and 48% of interviewees would be unwilling to eat with an HIV-infected person.

In other words, we haven’t made much progress since I first started writing about this topic five years ago, at least not in terms of people’s attitudes and awareness. In terms of treatment, there has been huge progress in China, including anti-discrimination laws and free retrovirals for anyone with AIDS. The government needs to do much, more, however. Justice Cameron said, for example, that while the government provides free retrovirals for treatment of AIDS, people must still pay for medications for opportunistic infections from their own pockets, which can easily impoverish them.

I don’t really know what it is about natural leaders, the way they stand out in a crowd even when silent, and the way that they make those they’re talking with feel like they are the only person in the entire world. Edwin Cameron has those qualities, and the reporters he spoke to were visibly moved when he made an urgent appeal to them to encourage HIV sufferers in China to act as activists and to speak out the way he has. That is the only way to overcome stigma, he said., noting that what makes AIDS so insidious is that in many places it remains “a silent disease.” People suffer in silence for fear of ostracism if they tell the truth. This fear discourages Chinese people from getting tested, and those who are tested seek to hide their HIV status at all costs.

“This is a tragedy,” Justice Cameron said. “The Chinese government has a good treatment program. But there is a disturbing pattern here: 35-40,000 people in China are receiving antiviral treatment but more than double that number need treatment.” And they remain silent, and will die unnecessarily, as AIDS today is fully treatable. He pointed to activists in the US in the 1980s who generated a wave of publicity and awareness that put a human face on the disease, lessening the stigmatization in America dramatically. In China and Africa, there are few such activists. That is one of the keys to ending stimatization, he said: Africa needs a Magic Johnson to tell people they do not need to be ashamed of having AIDS.

It isn’t just a matter of fearing ostracism from friends and family, however. He said that AIDS sufferers still get turned away from health clinics in China’s provincial areas. The most poignant moment came when he described to reporters how he needed a special invitation sent from the Chinese government to its consulate in South Africa for him to be permitted entry into China. He added that when he comes to the US he must undergo an even more humiliating ordeal, being tested at the airport to determine whether his AIDS is under control (I am not sure exactly what they test for).

Hu and Wen have visited hospitals and spoken out on AIDS, he said, but efforts to educate the public remain seriously inadequate. “I beg them to do more,” Justice Cameron said.

Perhaps the most controversial topic he discussed was how markedly different the AIDS epidemic is in southern and western Africa, where the level of infection is above 11 percent. This is, he explained, “a mature epidemic, meaning that everone, gay or straight, young or old, knows someone who has died of AIDS.” This is unique; no other geography on earth has seen a massive AIDS epidemic that has spread beyond the main risk groups (injection drug users, plasma donors, “MSM” - men having sex with men - and sex trade workers). It was feared back in the time when I wrote my original post that China would be like Africa, home to a massive epidemic seeping into the mainstream, heterosexual population. It appears that will not happen. Justice Cameron said no one was sure why this phenomenon occurred only in a specific section of Africa, but said the reason could be genetic. In China, the number of people infected by shoddy plasma collection has leveled off, and the levels of infection are beginning to mirror those in other countries, with MSM and injection drug users being the most affected groups.

Working with Edwin Cameron was an inspiration. It was also inspiring to see the level of interest in this topic among the Chinese media. You can se some of the articles here and here. This was the high point of my nearly two years in China, and a day I’ll never forget.

A late-night quickie:

The European Parliament on Thursday awarded its top human rights prize to jailed Chinese dissident Hu Jia despite warnings from China that its relations with the 27-nation bloc would be seriously damaged if it did so.

In selecting Hu to receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European lawmakers said they are “sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China.” Hu has advocated for the rights of Chinese citizens with HIV-AIDS and chronicled the arrest, detention and abuse of other activists.

After I posted a few weeks ago that I felt Hu was deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, I had an opportunity to discuss his career with friends of mine (Westerners involved in government) who are much more familiar with his activities than I. Since then, I’ve had rather mixed feelings about Hu Jia.

His arrest is certainly prima facie evidence that today’s CCP retains much of the prickly, pig-headed, uptight, asinine qualities of yore. And yet, there’s no denying Hu was often a self-promoter, practically shouting at the government, “Arrest me,” especially considering his timing. (He was warned that such antics right before the Olympic Games would not be tolerated, and he persisted in a most in-your-face manner.) None of that even begins to justify his arrest, but maybe it raises questions about Hu’s judgment and motivations?

Hu did dedicate much of his time to raising awareness of AIDS and environmental issues in China. But my friends, one of whom works at the United Nations, challenged me about what Hu has actually done aside from draw attention to himself and get himself arrested. I mentioned a project he launched to help AIDS orphans in Henan, and they countered that it was more hype than anything else. “Basically he wrote some emails,” my friend countered. “Do we award the Nobel Prize to someone who just sent out emails?” Before anyone jumps on a high horse and says I’m slandering Hu Jia (whom I’ve defended many times on this blog), please understand I am only saying I don’t know - that maybe he’s an example of our emotions (mine included) making us jump to conclusions. Or maybe he actually did deserve the Nobel Prize. As I said, mixed feelings.

Whether he deserves the Sakharov Prize is up for debate, as with any prize for political activism. In any case, if this inspires greater scrutiny of China’s repressive tendencies, paranoia and eagerness to arrest anyone who threatens to shed light on them, then I’m glad Hu Jia won.

I meant to put up a one-liner, and suddenly it became a tome. Good night.

According to a report in yesterday’s WaPo, police detained AIDS activist Gao Yaojie at her home on Sunday and prevented the octogenarian doctor from traveling to Beijing to apply for a U.S. visa. Dr. Gao, instrumental in exposing the severity of China’s HIV/AIDS crisis, planned to travel to the U.S. to collect an award from Vital Voices for her work.

Gao, a retired physician, was among the first to expose Henan’s blood scandal in which millions sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run health clinics, making the province the epicenter of China’s AIDS problem.

She wrote and distributed material warning people of the risks of blood-selling, making her a target of local authorities fearful of the social stigma and political sensitivity surrounding AIDS.

The story was told to Reuters by Beijing AIDS activist Hu Jia who claims that Dr. Gao is now under house arrest and that her telephone service has been suspended.

This is the not the first time that Dr. Gao has been prevented from leaving China to receive an award for her work, Chinese authorities also barred her from traveling to award ceremonies in 2001 and 2003.

Beijing’s actions could also come up as an early issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton serves as honorary chair for Vital Voices and her name was reportedly included in the invitation letter to Dr. Gao.

UPDATE via CDT: After the issue was raised by the US Embassy in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu claimed that the ministry had no knowledge of Gao’s detention, according to a Reuters report. Jiang referred questions to the local Zhengzhou government (who is not talking) and reminded reporters that China was: “a country with a system of law and everyone is equal before the law.”

Richard Spencer also has a great post on his meetings with Dr. Gao and the difficulties she has had to endure as the result of her activism.

Superb opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal by Brad Adams, executive director of the Asian division of Human Rights Watch, about the Chinese government’s spectacularly evil efforts to cover up the story of AIDS spreading through the province of Henan from 2000-02. The epidemic was the result of illegal plasma collection in the province’s rural villages (a topic I wrote about at length here). The party member who ordered the incident hushed up was promoted and honored recently for his “important contributions to the development of the province’s sanitation industry.”

Adams describes how journalists travelling to Henan were detained by the police and expelled, while the Chinese press was ordered not to report anything at all about the epidemic. He writes:

Why would anyone lie about such a vast epidemic? The answer is simple: Covering up the spread of a stigmatized disease like AIDS might help to ensure that investment continued to pour into impoverished provinces like Henan. The Henan blood scandal sent a clear message to other local officials: if you have an epidemic, cover it up, and you’ll be rewarded.

[Sorry I can't link; this is from the print version.]

It’s kind of amusing that there is a whole fringe that equates the CCP with the government of the US. As any reader of this site knows, I am no fan of President Bush, but to write that citizens in America are treated by their government in a manner that in any way resembles the way the Chinese are treated by the CCP — it’s not only laughable, it’s scary. And infinitely dumb. Three of our big-name whistleblowers were named Time’s Man of the Year recently; in China, they’d be wasting away in jail unsung and unknown, if not shot in the head.