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State
sponsored homophobia spreading Hiv in gay community experts say
15 May 2007- Johannesburg– The legalisation of
same-sex marriages in South Africa in 2006 was expected to speed up the
liberation of gays and lesbians in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe
and Namibia, where homosexuality is still illegal, but international and
local experts believe the battle for recognition in Africa is far from
over.
Researchers, community leaders and activists who were
part of a recent international delegation to a three-day conference on
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and HIV/Aids, in
Pretoria, South Africa, voiced their concerns about the risks posed by
one-sided health programmes and HIV prevention campaigns in Africa.
This is what they told IRIN/PlusNews:
“Discriminatory rule in countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria,
Cameroon and Kenya is an ongoing [problem]... and LGBT people who live
under laws that criminalise same-sex activity are often excluded from
national healthcare programmes and HIV prevention campaigns,” said Carey
Alan Johnson, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
senior specialist on Africa.
“Some donor organisations also condone this blatant human
rights violation of LGBT communities through unclear policies on how
their funds should be spent.
“Take PEPFAR [the multibillion dollar United States
President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief] in Ghana, for instance, and
how it covers the purchase of condoms but not the purchase of
water-based lubrication necessary for condoms not to break during anal
intercourse,” Mr. Johnson pointed out.
Ian Schwartz, the director of Namibia's gay rights group,
The Rainbow Project, highlighted the problems of access to healthcare in
Namibia for LGBT communities, people with disabilities and other sexual
minority groups, like commercial sex workers.
“It remains a major issue,” he insisted..
“The attitude of the Namibian government was certainly
demonstrated recently when, after many months of working on the third
medium-term plan [part of the national strategy for addressing HIV and
Aids], The Rainbow Project managed, for the first time, to get in a
clause on the health needs of sexual minorities in national programming,
but this clause was thrown out during the review of the document in
Parliament.
“It’s very sad, because there is growing evidence to
support earlier fears that national health interventions run the risk of
failure if ... [they] continue to exclude people based on sexual
identity.”
Professor Vasu Reddy, chief research specialist at the
Gender and Development Unit of South Africa's Human Sciences Research
Council commented: “Homosexuals as well as heterosexuals are left more
vulnerable to HIV infection as a result of the attitudes of governments
to LGBT people on the [African] continent.
“Persecution of gays and lesbians is also rife in Africa,
and just because it does not hit the press ... [people think] it is not
happening, but one experience is one too many, and often illustrates how
far LGBT people will go to blend in or even operate on the ‘down-low’,
where people who desire same-sex intimacy are forced to commit to false
heterosexual marriages to conceal their sexual identities, often with
dire consequences.
“Issues of same-sex sexuality and HIV/Aids are absent
from national debate and, if not explored, threaten to reverse the gains
of national and even global health programming,” Prof Reddy noted.
Among other things, Johnson, Schwartz and Reddy have
called for the urgent repeal of conservative donor conditions as well as
laws that criminalise same-sex sexuality.
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