SHILLONG: The community of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) has demanded that KHADC chief HS Shylla should retract his statement on the community and issue an open apology to them.
Representing the PLHIV and the drug users’ community in Meghalaya, Barry Leslie Kharmalki told reporters on Wednesday, “We want him to take back his statement or give an open apology to the communities in Meghalaya. And if we don’t see this, we have some good lawyers like the Lawyers Collective (a national NGO working for human rights) who fight for HIV and AIDS cause in India. If need be, we have to go to them.”
“Our very prominent leader has made some very discriminatory remarks, especially saying that carriers of HIV are through truck drivers or those who marry truck drivers from outside the state, which actually is quite stigmatising as he is targeting only a group of people,” he added.
Moreover, the community decided to send Shylla some materials such as Flip charts to show modes of transmission of HIV and how counselling and testing are done “before he makes thoughtless comments”.
Pointing to the “hate sin but love the sinner” comment of Shylla, Kharmalki said, “Are all the people affected with HIV sinners?”
Taking exception to the term “victim”, he said, “Do we look like HIV victims from any angle?”
Stating that Shylla does not know the good and the bad language in the HIV context, Kharmalki said the community should be referred to as PLHIV and not HIV patients or people suffering from HIV.
“I will still forgive him but as a leader he should be sensitive, you think he did all the reading? How does he know? There is somebody amongst us who helped him for vested interests. If we come to know about the person who fed him the information, (the person) will also be held accountable,” he added.
The representative for PLHIV asserted that instead of stigmatising the community, the government should concentrate on prevention and launch extensive prevention campaigns to check new infections, launch testing campaigns for the general population.
Countering Shylla’s statement on truck drivers and migrant workers as carriers of the virus, Kharmalki said injecting drug users, sex workers and men having sex with men are categorised as high risk groups by National AIDS Control Society (NACO) while truckers and migrants are only the bridge population and not high risk group.
Again, Kharmalki said HIV testing centre is at all CHCs and PHCs for testing pregnant mothers.
“He should see what is there to help. I don’t see the lineage bill is going to prevent HIV-AIDS,” he said, adding that there should be a need for prevention, treatment, procuring drugs, better healthcare for children etc.
“Although, in today’s paper, he said his intention is not to stigmatise or discriminate. But what he said today is stigmatising and discriminatory as when you put your bias or unfair judgment on a certain group of people just because of their occupation, that is already stigma and discrimination,” he said.
Irked at the silence of the state government, Kharmalki said, “Where is the health minister? We haven’t heard from him, even MACS should have reacted to some extent.”
Some of the people addressing the press conference, the member of Jaintia Network for Positive People (JNPP), and member of Meghalaya State Network of Positive People (MSNP+), expressed their opposition to Shylla’s statements.
A lady from JNPP said as per reports from the network found that people who are affected with the virus do not have non-tribal spouses who are truck drivers.
Another lady from MSNP+ said 90 per cent affected with the virus are tribals and there is no mixed marriage.
Statistics
Cementing his argument against Shylla’s comments, Kharmalki brought up statistics he received from the ARTC and said, “We don’t go and ask people whether they have gone for mix marriage or we deal with the infection. For the first time in my life I have to segregate them- the tribals and non-tribal infected with the virus.”
“HIV did not discriminate anybody. When the TB bacteria and the HIV virus can coexist very aaram se. HIV and TB can co-exist, why not we,” Kharmalki said.
As per statistics available with ARTC, he said there are 90 sex workers – 87 are Khasis and three non-Khasis, from blood transfusion-10 who got infected 8 are non-Khasis and two are Khasis, 127 IDU who are positive- 52 are non-Khasi and 75 are Khasis, mother to child transmission- 181- 40 are non Khasi, and 141 are Khasis, 70 people among the transgender or men sex with men group registered – 8 are non-khasis and 62 are Khasis.
The 146 truckers who are infected with HIV- 17are non-Khasis, 129 are Khasis. The number of people who got infected due to unsafe sex with spouse or partners is 3,102 – 624 are Khasis and 2,478 non-Khasis.
As per the statistics available with the MSNP+, he said there are 1,732 people registered with it in which 660 are male out of which 113 are non-Khasis and 547 are Khasis, there are 932 females out of which 100 are non-Khasis and 832 are Khasis.
There are 11 transgender persons registered with the organisation in which 1 is non-Khasi and 10 are Khasis.
LGBT group
A transgender activist, D Marwein, said, “As a transgender activist, I am very disappointed by the statement given by him about not recognising the third gender.”
Marwein pointed to the National Legal Services Authority judgment in which transgender people were declared to be ‘third gender’ and were affirmed the fundamental rights.
