San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, November 17, 2002
Juliette Terzieff, Chronicle Foreign Service

For 47 days, Arif Jafar and three colleagues were kept in a filthy jail. At first, there was no clean water, and they were unable to bathe. Guards beat them.

The four were accused of running a sex racket and showing pornographic films at their offices in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, although those charges were eventually replaced by counts of criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting a crime, and the sale of obscene materials.

"(But) everyone knew what we were really doing," Jafar said.

What Jafar and his colleagues do is work with men with HIV -- an activity that in large parts of India is akin to a crime.

As India struggles to contain one of the worst AIDS epidemics in the world, the problem is being compounded by a dangerous phenomenon: accusations of widespread police abuse of frontline HIV-prevention workers.

"The Indian government is shooting its own AIDS program in the foot," said a July report by Human Rights Watch of New York.

The case of Jafar -- who works for Naz Foundation International, a charitable organization that provides condoms and sex education to gay men -- attracted widespread media attention in India.

Human rights groups say Indian police routinely harass, beat and arrest AIDS workers, typically justifying their actions by brandishing the colonial- era Section 377 of the Penal Code, which criminalizes "unnatural acts." The police also regularly extort money from female prostitutes and bisexual or gay men, health workers say.

The Indian government says there are 4 million people living with HIV, but aid workers say the number is probably twice that.

"The truth is, we don't even really know what we are dealing with, and the government is not doing nearly enough," said Anjali Gopalan, Naz Foundation International's executive director in Delhi.

J.V.R. Prasada Rao, the former project director for the government's National AIDS Control Organization, denies widespread police abuse against AIDS workers.

"There are some localized problems, but there is no organized program of human rights violations -- just efforts by some police to extract money from sex workers," he said.

In Bangalore early this year, police arrested several female workers of the charitable organization called Samraksha and then rubbed hot peppers in their eyes and mouths and in the vagina of one detainee, according to Samraksha employees.

Because they literally walk the streets educating female prostitutes about AIDS, the outreach workers were accused of being prostitutes themselves, even though the charity has existed since 1993 and is partially financed by the government.

Men who have sex with men are deeply stigmatized in India.

Many get married to disguise being gay, making housewives the latest group to show alarming rates of infection. In Bombay, according to health workers, an estimated 40 percent of male sex workers are said to be married, and the human immunodeficiency virus is often passed to children in utero or through breast feeding.

To be sure, the government has made efforts to address the disease, donating 20 percent of World Bank funds for "targeted interventions" among high-risk groups. India's leaders also have broken long-standing taboos about discussing sex and the disease.

HIV awareness groups have made repeated appeals that the state do more, citing a desperate need for a concentrated battle on concurrent fronts, but they fear the political will is still missing.

"It is not uncommon to hear people in positions of power say the disease may be a good way to control the population," Gopalan said. "Look at who is dying. It is the poor, the disenfranchised, the undesirables. But it is not going to stay that way."

Rao said such criticism is unfair.

"There are public-awareness campaigns, millions of dollars and man-hours allocated to working against the spread of the disease," he said. "So far, AIDS is affecting predominantly high-risk groups, and that is where most of our efforts are going. If we can control the spread in these groups, new AIDS cases will drop significantly."

Rao was referring not only to intravenous drug addicts but also to India's estimated 2.3 million female prostitutes in brothels and 1.2 million hijra, an Urdu term for transsexuals, cross-dressers, hermaphrodites and castrated men.

In medieval times, the original hijra -- eunuchs -- commanded a certain fear-inspired respect as the guardians of royal harems. Modern-day hijra are mostly transsexuals who had the operations voluntarily, although some were street children mutilated by other hijra.

They are typically gaudily made up, and even considered by some to be witches. Shopkeepers often avert their eyes and spit in the dust whenever they pass by.

In Old Delhi, hijra prowl the crowded alleyways of the predominantly Muslim section looking for clients or demanding money by using an age-old belief that they are capable of casting curses.

"They know about AIDS, but most are working without protection," said Khairati Lal Bhola, who has worked with hijra health and legal issues for 40 years. "Their customers want more enjoyment, not condoms."

The few activists able to enter the secretive world of the hijra community in Delhi estimate that as many as 80 percent are HIV-positive and complain that efforts to find them alternative jobs are undermined by discrimination and police harassment.

"The hijra are not afraid of death because they have no homes, no families, no life," Bhola said. "They have nothing to live for, and our fight to change that is being thwarted."

Back in Bangalore, Jafar said he hopes the government will soon clamp down on police officers who interfere with AIDS workers.

"If a well-known, government-approved group can be harassed," he said, "then what chance do others have who are trying to help?"

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