Jamaica: Police Violence Fuels AIDS Epidemic
Windy
City Times, December 1, 2004
Widespread violence and discrimination against gay men
and people living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica is undermining government measures
to combat the country’s fast-growing epidemic, Human Rights Watch said in a
new report. The 79-page report, “Hated to Death: Homophobia, Violence, and
Jamaica’s HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” documents extensive police persecution of
people suspected of homosexual conduct, as well as sex workers and people
living with HIV/AIDS. Gay men and people living with HIV/AIDS face serious
violence, and are often forced to abandon their homes and communities. Health
workers often provide them with inadequate healthcare or deny them treatment
altogether.
Many people in Jamaica still believe that HIV is
transmitted by air or casual contact. Widespread homophobia and discrimination
are effectively undermining the government response to HIV/AIDS, Human Rights
Watch said.
“Until Jamaica addresses the epidemic of homophobic
violence, it will have no hope against the epidemic of HIV/AIDS,” said
Rebecca Schleifer, researcher with Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS Program and
author of the report. “If the Jamaican government is serious about fighting
the country’s AIDS epidemic, it should stop promoting brutality against gay
men and lesbians and start protecting them from abuse.”
Jamaica’s Ministry of Health has taken steps to combat
discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS or at risk of contracting
the virus. But discriminatory laws and state practices are undermining these
important efforts.
Jamaica’s Victorian-era sodomy laws, which criminalize
consensual sex between adult men, are used to arrest “peer educators” who
provide HIV/AIDS information and condoms to other gay men.
Police extort money and sex from gay men as well as sex
workers, sometimes using the mere possession of condoms—a key tool in HIV
prevention—as an excuse to harass or arrest both them and the AIDS educators
who work with them.
Discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS poses
serious barriers to obtaining necessary medical care and drives many from
seeking health services for themselves and their children.
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