By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Dec 30 1997 (IPS)

Sherman de Rose was beaten up after he set up Sri Lanka’s first gay group, Companions on a Journey, two years ago.

Fearing for his life, the gay activist and former Roman Catholic priest fled to Singapore but returned after two weeks. “I could not keep running. I had to face up to the future.”

De Rose has not only seen his gay group through hard times – in a country that generally treats gays with distaste – but has also, this year, initiated the formation of a coalitionp of non- governmental agencies working against HIV/AIDS.

This month, the Coalition to Protect the Rights of People Living with HIV and AIDS, as it is called, was bold enough to take to the streets with money tills and seek public support for the creation of a Trust Fund to help victims of the virus.

“We thought it would be a good idea, during the Christmas and New Year season, to seek donations from the public to help set up the Fund,” De Rose, the Coalition’s convenor, told IPS.

The volunteers, accompanied by a noisy band of drummers, stopped Christmas shoppers and vehicle owners in the capital, shaking tills and seeking donations. The response was mixed. “Some shouted at us – saying such people deserved it; others shied away. But there were many who smiled and slipped a coin into the till. Overall we were quite happy with the outcome,” he said.

The Coalition organised its first major public event – a candlelight memorial in the open – on December 1st to mark World AIDS Day, focussing much-needed attention on this problem. Its Christmas appeal, said the launching of the Trust Fund was to help victims who “during this season of goodwill and cheer, desperately need your help.”

“We need the support of everyone – individuals, the government and private sector in a bid to help AIDS victims,” said Mallika Ganasinghe, a lawyer and Coalition member. She said what was lacking was a support structure for victims. “They need a lot of moral support, caring and a reason to get on with their lives. That is what we hope to provide.”

The Coalition comprises Companions, Centre for Policy Alternatives, NEST ( an NGO that cares for AIDS patients), the Media Interact Group, doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Several other NGOs and individuals have expressed interest in joining the Coalition. De Rose said the Coalition was launching the Trust to help HIV/AIDS patients buy their medicines, give dietary support and provide possible accommodation facilities.

A series of incidents in early to mid-1987 spurred the formation of the Coalition. According to a Coalition statement, an AIDS patient was allegedly assaulted in a hospital and later died. His body lay in a mortuary for seven days because doctors were too scared to perform an autopsy. The alleged assailant was never brought to trial.

In July, newspapers reported the story of a woman who returned from the Middle East and was diagnosed as HIV positive. Her confidentiality was breached, and the police took it upon themselves to ‘educate’ her husband, and her community, the statement said.

Around the same period, a doctor acquired HIV from a blood transfusion in a semi-government hospital. The matron of the hospital then told the doctor to find another job.

“These were examples of obvious discrimination of people with HIV and AIDS. One of the reasons for the formation of the Coalition was that we were concerned about these fundamental human rights abuses. We are also concerned with the labelling of HIV and AIDS patients as promiscuous, or as deserving of their condition,” De Rose noted.

Sri Lanka has low HIV-prevalence and far fewer AIDS cases than the rest of Asia. Government doctors say 60 people out of 75 reported AIDS cases have died so far since the first case was diagnosed in 1987.

There are 200 more reported cases of persons carrying the HIV virus while estimates on HIV carriers range from 6,000 to 8,000. Dr. Hemamal Jayawardene, Sri Lanka country programme officer for UNAIDS, an umbrella of UN agencies involved in HIV/AIDS related activity, says among the many groups at risk are Sri Lanka’s 12,000 odd commercial sex workers, migrant workers, prisoners and female workers at the country’s free trade zones where promiscuity is high.

“This is the tip of the iceberg. This floating population is moving around not knowing that it carries the disease,’ ‘notes Dr Sujata Samarakoon from the government’s Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) centre. She said that the government was making a

concerted effort towards tackling the problem through a state- run National AIDS Committee set up several years ago with NGO participation.

According to projections contained in a United Nations Development Programme-commissioned report, Sri Lanka could by the year 2005 have as many as 80,000 cumulative cases of HIV infection with an HIV prevalence rate of 0.54 per cent among the population aged 15 to 64.

Local academics say that one of the biggest problems faced by the NGO community in the campaign against AIDS is society’s lack of understanding of the problems. Sri Lankan society frowns on HIV and AIDS victims and newspapers often report how victims are chased away from their homes by neighbours and even their own families, and live in hiding.

Victims are ostracizised and face humiliation even at the hands of doctors and nurses who treat them with great reluctance. Gay persons are in a similar plight. They are treated as social outcasts and are often bashed up by police.

“The gay community has, for years, been stigmatised and targeted for violence and isolation after the advent of HIV/AIDS, said De Rose who joined the Brothers of Charity and worked in Ireland for four years before returning to Sri Lanka. He left the priesthood when he discovered he couldn’t cope with his gay tendencies.

“There was guilt, shame and I was challenging myself all the time.” He said there was an expected shock reaction from a largely conservative society when Companions was formed.

“We decided this is not a debate – this is about ourselves. We wanted to protect ourselves. Society can call us perverts, deviants _ whatever. We were determined to come out in public,” he said.

Companions has 436 members and thousands more who like to remain anonymous. “We don’t ask for their names. Some of them have got together and operate through a post box number,” De Rose said, adding they get much support from lesbians.

The group has set up a centre where gay people can congregate, hang around, relax and meet up with others. “We try to be a healer to this group. We give them space to discover their society.”

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