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DURBAN,
SEP 5 (IPS) - To understand the racial and other discrimination
that the HIV/AIDS epidemic trails in its devastating wake, take
a walk in the park across the road from the venue of the UN World
Conference Against Racism .
Two
young women sit in the sun, braiding each other's hair. They are
not much younger than Gugu Dlamini was when she was beaten unconsciousness
by four people in a mob, angry at her decision to reveal her HIV
status in a Durban township.
The
park has been renamed the ''Gugu Dlamini'' park, after the young
woman who died three days after her attack in Dec 1998. On World
AIDS day that year, the young AIDS activist had decided to come
out and reveal her status. She was dead less than a fortnight later.
The
park is now a symbol of a city and a country, trying to come to
terms with the deep stigmas still attached to being HIV-positive
in South Africa today. ''There are lots of Gugu's beaten up everyday
for saying who they are and what their health status is,'' said
Mercy Makgalemele, also a woman living with HIV and a mentor to
the young Dlamini.
This
Sunday (Sep 9), Makgalemele celebrates her 31st birthday. She is
a young woman grown tired with a 12-year-long battle not only to
triumph over the virus doing battle in her body, but against a society
that still discriminates, even though one in 10 South Africans is
infected.
Makgalemele
told her story of being beaten by her husband when she notified
him, of being fired from her job and ostracised from her community.
''I'm
tired of a world that is continuously debating,'' she told a panel
on the intersection between AIDS, race, stigma and discrimination.
The
solutions had been debated and discerned; it was time to educate
communities. ''At the community level, we face challenges that are
not here,'' the feisty young women said, waving her hand around
the cavernous hall filled with HIV/AIDS activists from around the
world. The ''Gugus'' of the world still faced discrimination in
the workplace and in accessing education, said Makgalemele.
''No
woman will be empowered, unless she is economically empowered,''
she said calling on the private sector to employ people who were
HIV-positive.
In
a conference packed with rights issues and a raft of demands from
people on the fringes of societies across the globe, UN AIDS executive
director Peter Piot had been asked in Durban ''What are you doing
here, at a racism conference?''
Clearly
aghast at the question, Piot said, ''The question illustrates there
is still not the understanding that the driving force behind this
epidemic are discrimination, poverty, rejection and stigma. We need
to do a better job in spreading the message.''
''Nothing
better illustrates the destructive force of intolerance and discrimination
than HIV/AIDS,'' he said.
His
colleague Peter Eggleton said the links were manifest since the
first manifestations of HIV/AIDS had always been very closely linked
to race. Its genesis, still mythical, is still held to be from ''green
monkeys'' in Africa.
''HIV/AIDS
put into circulation images and ideas that played into racist stereotypes
which exploit the fault-lines of an already unequal world,'' said
Eggleton. ''The stigmas do not arise out of the blue,'' avers an
HIV/AIDS paper that makes the links. ''They usually build upon and
reinforce pre-existing fears and prejudices; about poverty, about
gender, about sex and sexuality, and about race.''
In
a world where 40 million people were infected throughout the Nineties
and an astounding 15 million people died, linked discrimination
and intolerance would grow, said Piot unless a set of strategies
kicked.
The
most vital, he said, was leadership by political and moral authorities
in society. ''It doesn't cost a penny but its worth all the money
spent today on AIDS. Five years ago there was a deadly silence and
that has changed, particularly on this continent,'' said Piot.
Other
vital strategies, said Piot, was that leadership of the battle against
AIDS had to be vested in people who lived with the HI-virus; protective
legislation was necessary as was education and the documentation
of all abuses.
In
Brazil, he said, a successful movement led by people living with
AIDS was behind government advances in the treatment of AIDS. ''HIV
stigma comes through powerful combination of shame and fear. Our
aim should be to replace shame with solidarity and fear with hope,''
said Piot.
With
a carefully considered strategy, it was possible to end the lingering
perception of the pandemic as that which afflicted ''another''.
The
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson was hopeful
the final conference declaration and platform for action would explicitly
pronounce on the view that all human rights should be extended to
people living with HIV/AIDS.(END)
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