EGYPT ARRESTS MEN FOR BEING HIV+

An outrageous series of anti-gay arrests in Cairo, sparked by one man’s admission to police that he is HIV-positive, have been slammed by human rights groups.

The arrests began in October 2007 when police stopped two men having an altercation on a street in central Cairo. When one of them told the officers that he was HIV-positive, police immediately took them both to the Morality Police office and opened an investigation against them for homosexual conduct.

The two men told human rights activists that they were slapped and beaten for refusing to sign statements the police wrote for them. They spent four days in the Morality Police office handcuffed to an iron desk, sleeping on the floor.

Police later subjected the two men to forensic anal examinations designed to “prove” that they had engaged in homosexual conduct.

Police then arrested two more men because their photographs or telephone numbers were found on the first two detainees.

Authorities subjected all to HIV tests without their consent. All four are still in detention, pending prosecutors’ decision on whether to bring charges of homosexual conduct. The first two arrestees, who reportedly tested HIV-positive, are being held in a Cairo hospital, handcuffed to their beds and only unchained for an hour each day.

Meanwhile, police apparently placed the apartment where one of the men had lived under surveillance. On November 20, two days after a new tenant had assumed the lease, police raided the apartment and detained four other men.

According to the arrest report, the men were fully dressed and were not engaging in any illegal acts at the time of the arrests. However, all were charged with homosexual conduct, apparently solely on the basis that they were found in a dwelling formerly occupied by one of the earlier detainees.

People who have spoken to the four men since their arrest told Human Rights Watch that a non-commissioned officer in the police station beat one detainee on the head several times. Police allegedly forced the four men to stand in a painful position for three hours with their arms lifted in the air. They were not provided with food, drink, or blankets during their first four days of detention.

Authorities also tested these men for HIV without their consent. One of the men reportedly said that the prosecutor, when informing him that he had tested positive for HIV, told him: “People like you should be burnt alive. You do not deserve to live.”

A Cairo court convicted these four men on January 13 for the “habitual practice of debauchery [fujur] – a term used to penalize consensual homosexual conduct in Egyptian law. According to defence attorneys, the prosecution based their case only on coerced and repudiated statements taken from the men, and neither called witnesses nor produced other evidence to counter the men’s pleas of not guilty.

On February 2, a Cairo appeals court upheld their one-year prison sentence. One of them is held in a Cairo hospital, chained to his bed 23 hours a day.

Human Rights Watch has called on Egyptian authorities to overturn the convictions of the four men for the “habitual practice of debauchery,” and to free four others who are held pending trial.

“These shocking arrests and trials embody both ignorance and injustice,” said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “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.”

“These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that HIV is not a condition to be treated but a crime to be punished,” said Long. “HIV tests forcibly taken without consent, ill-treatment in detention, trials driven by prejudice, and convictions without evidence all violate international law.”