Associates Press - November 11, 2003

Human Rights Watch issued the warning in a statement from its New York offices.

"Providing antiretroviral drugs to poor people is a great step forward," said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

"But draconian crackdowns against people at high risk of HIV will only drive them underground and make it less likely that they will come forward for testing and treatment."

Last week, Chinese Executive Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang said thousands of poor HIV and AIDS patients would receive free AIDS treatment, starting with 5,000 this year. By 2008, the number will rise to 40,000 patients, said Zhang Fujian, director of the National HIV/AIDS Clinical Task Force, speaking Monday at a symposium on AIDS and SARS.

Human Rights Watch said other elements of the Ministry of Health's "five promises on AIDS work" - particularly, it said, an increased crackdown on drug users and prostitutes - could lead to rights abuses that would prevent AIDS drugs from being delivered effectively.

"China should repeal laws requiring forced detoxification, and work together with drug users and sex workers on HIV prevention and AIDS care," Adams said. "They are important allies in the fight against a burgeoning AIDS epidemic."

He also said he was concerned that the Ministry of Health didn't say how it would protect the rights of people with AIDS. Some hospitals in China are reluctant to admit HIV-positive patients.

"China urgently needs a national law barring discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, and should establish a mechanism through which victims of discrimination can file complaints," said Adams. "How will the Chinese government give out medicine if the patients can't even get in the hospital?"

On Monday, China brought together scientists, government leaders and even former U.S. President Bill Clinton to battle the health threats most urgent to itself and to big swaths of the world - SARS and AIDS.

At the symposium Monday at Tsinghua University, Clinton praised the Chinese government for its decision to help poor AIDS patients receive treatment. And he said the quick spread of SARS around the world demonstrated how countries and companies must collaborate to fight disease.

"A sneeze in Hong Kong led to a quarantine in Toronto," Clinton said. "We cannot escape each other's fate."

New HIV infections in China have been growing annually by about 30%. Chinese officials and the United Nations warn that 10 million people could be infected by 2020 without more effective prevention. About 1 million are already infected.
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