By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
CAIRO, Egypt – HIV-positive Egyptian men are arrested, tortured and chained to hospital beds while awaiting unfair homosexuality trials, Human Rights Watch reported on Wednesday. The rights group said the arrests and trials of eight men suspected of being homosexual in Egypt threaten both public health and human rights.
In October 2007, Police arrested two men having an altercation on a street in central Cairo. When one of them said he was HIV-positive, the police immediately took them to Morality Police office and began investigating them for homosexual activity. While in detention, officers handcuffed both men to metal desks and both slept on the floor for four days. The officers also slapped and beat the two men for refusing to sign statements the police wrote for them, and later subjected the two to forensic anal examinations designed to “prove” that they had engaged in homosexual conduct. The two men are currently handcuffed to their hospital beds 23 hours a day.
Police then arrested six more men suspected of being homosexuals. Two were arrested after their photographs or telephone numbers were found on the first two detainees. Another four were arrested in November when police raided the flat of one of those being held. According to the arrest report, the four were arrested solely on the basis that they were found in a dwelling formerly occupied by one of the earlier detainees. Even though the prosecution offered no evidence against the defendants, the four men were jailed for a year in January for “habitual debauchery,” which is a term used to penalize consensual homosexual acts in Egypt law.
Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program, said the arrests “embody both ignorance and injustice.” “Egypt threatens not just its international reputation but its own population if it responds to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with prison terms instead of prevention and care,” he said. Human Rights Watch urged Egypt to end arbitrary arrests based on HIV status and take steps to ensure that “the men receive highest available standard of medical care for any serious health conditions.”
For more information, please see:
BBC News – Egypt ‘torturing HIV sufferers’ – 6 February 2008
AFP – Egypt chaining HIV men to hospital beds: rights group – 6 February 2008
Voice of America – Rights group condemns Egyptian HIV arrests – 6 February 2008
Human Rights Watch – Stop criminalizing HIV – 5 February 2008
