The UKC 10th birthday bash at London’s Heaven nightclub was an enjoyable occasion, as all who attended agreed. But in addition to celebrating our anniversary with an organisational shindig we somehow managed to do something else, something new.
To repeat a comment from our letters page: “It was so enjoyable to be in an atmosphere where I didn’t worry about my appearance or health status.”
I think all of us were delighted that we’d managed to create a relaxed occasion, where straight, gay, black and white ended up getting to know each other and swapping life stories in a ‘happening’ atmosphere.
It answered cynicism that the various HIV-affected communities have nothing in common and can’t be expected to support to each other or relate socially.
Remember Warriors back in 1995? Maybe it’s time for another club night that specifically targets people with HIV. The Positive Lounge, anyone?
The Terrence Higgins Trust’s latest campaign is to fight any plans the government might have to institute compulsory HIV tests for asylum seekers.
We agree with the campaign. But we think a better one would oppose the automatic refusal of entry to anyone with HIV seeking to enter the UK.
Compulsory tests on entry would certainly be impractical, inhumane, make little difference to public health, and flout several international laws. Nonetheless, immigration minister Beverly Hughes has said, “I think we’ve got to consider [tests] for people seeking asylum.”
But while we support the THT’s campaign, we worry that it has a subtly wrong focus. Testing in itself is not the issue. The real issue is whether testing HIV positive becomes a reason for an automatic bar to entry - whatever a person’s immigration status.
The government wants to damp down the political furore over asylum seekers, but not prevent skilled immigrants staffing our schools and hospitals.
Their solution to this is to tighten asylum procedures, thus achieving a much-trumpeted reduction in the figures, while increasing the number entering on work permits. Home secretary David Blunkett has made it quite clear that his strategy on immigration is to ‘legalise’ it so the only people we let in are UN-sanctioned refugees, students and workers.
And the last thing he wants is to have those workers equated with ‘disease-ridden asylum seekers’.
So the real danger is that - while compassionately leaving asylum seekers alone - Blunkett will decide to test everyone applying for a work permit or a student visa for HIV, and apply a blanket exclusion to those who are positive.
What’s wrong with that? It’s what countries like the US and Australia do already, isn’t it? Well, what’s wrong with it is that it discriminates against people with HIV. It attacks their ability to be mobile, to escape poverty and the more insidious kinds of persecution, and to better themselves. It ignores the fact that immigrants contribute far more than merely economically to their new home.
We must resist the institutional trapping of positive people in their home state, whether that state be Tanzania, Thailand or Texas.
A blanket ban on any immigrants with HIV will effectively bar a section of the world’s population from a better life, more liberty and the pursuit of greater happiness, purely because they have a stigmatised condition. That is what HIV organisations should be campaigning against.
Gus Cairns, Editor in Chief
STOP PRESSAs Positive Nation went to press, the news story broke that Mohammed Dica, 37, had been convicted of “Biological Grievous Bodily Harm” for infecting two women with HIV and failing to disclose his condition. What do you think about this? Log on to the Positive voices website at www.ukcoalition.org/discus, look for the ‘Biological GBH case’ thread and have your say. |
