Egypt: Spreading Crackdown on HIV Endangers Public Health

The recent arrests bring to 12 the number of men arrested in a campaign against people police suspect of being HIV-positive. Four have already been sentenced to a year in jail and eight are still in custody. The two organizations called on Egyptian authorities to respect the men’s human rights and to immediately release them so as not to cause lasting damage to the country’s HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.

“In their misguided attempt to apply Egypt’s unjust law on homosexual conduct, authorities are carrying on a crackdown against people living with HIV/AIDS,” said Rebecca Schleifer, advocate for the HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “This not only violates the most basic rights of people living with HIV. It also threatens public health, by making it dangerous for anyone to seek information about HIV prevention or treatment.”

The most recent arrests occurred after police followed up on information coerced from men already in detention, according to the Health and Human Rights Program of the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Two of the newly detained men tested positive for HIV. One had his detention extended by 15 days at his February 12 court hearing, with the prosecutor and judge both claiming he was a danger to public health. Another has a hearing scheduled for February 23.

As in all previous cases, authorities forced the new detainees to undergo HIV testing without their consent. All those testing positive have been held in Cairo hospitals, chained to their beds.

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