|
Egypt 'torturing HIV sufferers'
06
Feb 2008-
Egypt- HIV-positive Egyptian men are tortured and chained to hospital
beds while awaiting unfair homosexuality trials, a human rights group
has claimed.
Human Rights
Watch (HRW) decried the "ignorance and injustice" of a case in which a
group of arrested men were given HIV tests without their consent.
They were also
subjected to anal tests to "prove" their homosexual conduct.
Two of the men
tested HIV-positive and are now handcuffed to hospital beds for 23 hours
a day, HRW said.
"These men have
been subjected to anal examination without their consent which amounts
to torture," Gasser Abdel-Razek, HRW's acting director of regional
relations in the Middle East, told the BBC on Wednesday.
"Egypt should
release the men unconditionally and put a system in place that does not
deal with HIV-positive individuals as criminals but as patients who
require medical care and attention."
Egypt's
Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the case.
'Ignorance
and injustice'
Two of the men
were arrested in October after a scuffle in central Cairo and when one
said he was HIV-positive they were taken to the police branch which
deals with issues of public morality.
Both men claim
they were beaten for refusing to sign statements written by the police.
Two more men
were arrested when police found their photographs and contact numbers in
the wallets of those detained.
All four men,
who have not been identified, remain in custody pending a prosecutor's
decision on possible charges.
Scott Long,
director of the US-based group's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender
Rights Programme, said the arrests "embody both ignorance and
injustice".
"These cases
show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that HIV is not a
condition to be treated but a crime to be punished," he said.
'Habitual
debauchery' convictions
Four further
arrests were made in November when police raided the flat of one of
those being held, which had been placed under surveillance.
Those four men
were sentenced to one year in jail in January having been convicted of
"habitual debauchery", which Human Rights Watch says is a euphemism used
to penalise consensual homosexual acts.
Their lawyers
claimed the prosecution had produced no evidence against the defendants,
who pleaded not guilty.
While not
explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, homosexuality can be
punished under several different laws covering obscenity, prostitution
and debauchery.
Egypt has come
under repeated criticism by both human rights groups and the
international community for its treatment of homosexual people.
|
