Egypt ‘torturing HIV sufferers’
HIV-positive Egyptian men are tortured and chained to hospital beds while awaiting unfair homosexuality trials, a human rights group has claimed.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) decried the “ignorance and injustice” of a case in which a group of arrested men were given HIV tests without their consent.
They were also subjected to anal tests to “prove” their homosexual conduct.
Two of the men tested HIV-positive and are now handcuffed to hospital beds for 23 hours a day, HRW said.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry had no immediate comment on the case.
‘Ignorance and injustice’
Two of the men were arrested in October after a scuffle in central Cairo and when one said he was HIV-positive they were taken to the police branch which deals with issues of public morality.
Both men claim they were beaten for refusing to sign statements written by the police.
| These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that HIV is… a crime to be punished Scott Long, Human Rights Watch |
Scott Long, director of the US-based group’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Programme, said the arrests “embody both ignorance and injustice”.
“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,” he said.
‘Habitual debauchery’ convictions
Four further arrests were made in November when police raided the flat of one of those being held, which had been placed under surveillance.
Those four men were sentenced to one year in jail in January having been convicted of “habitual debauchery”, which Human Rights Watch says is a euphemism used to penalise consensual homosexual acts.
Their lawyers claimed the prosecution had produced no evidence against the defendants, who pleaded not guilty.
While not explicitly referred to in Egypt’s legal code, homosexuality can be punished under several different laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery.
Egypt has come under repeated criticism by both human rights groups and the international community for its treatment of homosexual people.
