By Sara L.M. Davis
Yu Hua’s New York Times op-ed, “In China, Grievances Keep Coming“, says that China’s petitioning system works alongside the legal system as a parallel way to channel thousands of individual grievances each year. In fact, as Asia Catalyst sees in our work with Chinese AIDS NGOs, the petitioning system undermines social stability.
Asia Catalyst, Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group and Dongjen Center for Human Rights Education and Action announce the publication of the second in our series of human rights manuals for grassroots groups from HIV/AIDS-affected communities: Know It: The Rights Framework.
From the Wall Street Journal Asia
By Mark Heywood and Sara L.M. Davis
China will observe World AIDS Day on Thursday with events in which Chinese leaders publicly embrace people living
with HIV/AIDS. But on every other day of the year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese living with HIV/AIDS are treated as second-class citizens.
Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group protesters – Photo by Rico Gustav
By Karyn Kaplan
Kaplan’s electrifying essay on the human rights of drug users in Asia is excerpted from her plenary speech given at the
International Conference on AIDS in Asia/Pacific (ICAAP), Busan, South Korea, August 27, 2011 and reprinted from the Health and Human Rights Forum.
Here in Asia, home to more than half the world’s opiate users, more than 16 million drug users and at least 6.5 million injectors, where HIV prevalence among injectors is among the highest in the world, where the HIV epidemic is largely driven by unsafe injecting practices, where less than 10% of heroin injectors are on methadone, and where injectors can access an average of just two sterile syringes per month, we lack 90% of the resources necessary to provide the
essential harm reduction services necessary for realizing the right to health. But while resources are a significant challenge, I would argue that even when we have the resources, it does not ensure access.
By Yu Fangqiang
On July 27, 2010, a person living with HIV/AIDS in Anhui Province successfully filed China’s first case alleging employment discrimination on the basis of HIV status. Soon afterwards, a second case was filed in Sichuan Province. A year later, both cases were lost, and both plaintiffs filed appeals. Currently, the third plaintiff in an HIV-related employment discrimination case is preparing to file suit. In this article, lawyer Yu Fangqiang tells the personal story behind the historically important Anhui case.
