For world health day, Asia Catalyst called for attention to the situation of medical discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in Asia. Anand Grover, UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and Director of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS in India, joins in the call with his guest blog post. Anand Grover is pictured to the left. (more…)
[COMMENTARY] 10,000 Smiles: A Chinese Campaign Against HIV/AIDS Discrimination
By Yu Fangqiang
Chinese civil rights activist Yu Fangqiang tells the story behind his “10,000 Smiles” campaign, which collected over 12,000 photos of people holding up signs in English and Chinese with slogans against HIV-related discrimination such as “People with HIV/AIDS have the right to work.” The photos included a diverse group of individuals including government officials, students, people on the street, and U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke, and they were shared online through social media and news reports in China’s official news organ, People’s Daily.
[PROFILE] Shen Tingting: Researcher For Action
Shen Tingting, a prominent HIV/AIDS and human rights advocate in Beijing, China, has been working with marginalized communities since her college days. In 2007, she, along with Li Dan, co-founded the Korekata AIDS Law Center. Until 2012, she was the deputy director of its parent organization, Dongjen Center for Human Rights Education and Action [https://www.dongjen.org/]. At Dongjen, she founded and managed an outreach program for sex workers in Beijing after she earned her masters from Renmin University in Social Welfare in 2009. Currently Tingting is a visiting research fellow at Asia Catalyst.
Tingting has written and advocated on a range of rights-related HIV/AIDS issues, including testing and confidentiality, compensation for victims of China’s blood disaster, and the rights of sex workers and drug users. She is the author of a new report on HIV testing and human rights in China, Real-Name Testing: Is China Ready? and previously conducted research to co-author a major bilingual human rights report, China’s Blood Disaster: The Way Forward. Her articles have also appeared in the HIV/AIDS Law and Policy Review.
She will present a poster on compensation for China’s HIV blood disaster on Tuesday, July 24th from 12:30 to 2:30pm and will speak in several other sessions. In the run-up to this year’s International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2012, Tingting sat down with Asia Catalyst to chat about her work.
[REPORT] HIV Real-Name Testing: Is China Ready? (2012)
By Meg Davis and Shen Tingting
About 4 months ago, Guangxi and Hunan provinces announced plans to require real-name testing for HIV, and the Ministry of Health expressed support stating it should be a national policy. Immediately there was a huge outcry from the China Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, the China Gay Male Health Forum, and others.
A joint report from Asia Catalyst and Korekata AIDS Law Center calls on China to protect patient confidentiality, provide counseling, and end compulsory testing in order to encourage more people to get tested for HIV. Without these basic rights, Chinese government programs that aim to expand HIV testing will not succeed.
The following briefly outlines our joint report and conclusions, but first we want to tell you about a community-run HIV testing program right here in Beijing, which has been dealing with these issues on the ground.
[EVENT] Come See Asia Catalyst at AIDS 2012
Please join Asia Catalyst in a series of workshops, roundtables, and presentations on HIV/AIDS and human rights in Asia. Look for us at our Global Village, or online at asiacatalyst.org, @saralmdavis, and https://www.facebook.com/asiacatalyst
Below is the complete list of all our events and the presentations by the China delegation with time, date, location. See you there!
Sunday, July 22:
Know It, Prove It, Change It Workshop
Through a hands-on approach, participants will gain a basic understanding of the international human rights framework and how it applies to HIV, core skills in human rights research and documentation, and the basics of human rights advocacy planning. Our training curriculum handbooks will be provided. The workshop will be led by Karyn Kaplan (Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group), Sara L.M. Davis (Asia Catalyst) and Shen Tingting (Korekata AIDS Law Center). Chinese language translation available.
Time: Workshop: 2:00-6:00pm; Buffet dinner: 6:00-8:00pm
Pre-registration required: Open to all staff of AIDS NGOs, whether or not you are registered for the conference. Please contact Shalena Krumm (skrumm@asiacatalyst.org) to register.
