Brothels owned and staffed by Han Chinese are the main source of infection, experts say.<\/p>\n
2015-12-14<\/p>\n
Climbing rates of HIV infection in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region, with the early spread of the disease driven mainly by drug use, are now the result of a burgeoning sex trade in the region\u2019s mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur south, sources say.<\/p>\n
The southern prefectures of Hoten (in Chinese, Hotien) and Kashgar (Kashi) have been especially hard hit, sources say, with growing numbers of brothels disguised as barber shops, massage parlors, and \u201cspas\u201d set up by Han Chinese migrants to the towns.<\/p>\n
Young Uyghur farmers and government workers are now those most frequently infected, the owner of one Kashgar clinic told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever they get some money, they go right away to these so-called hotels or spas that have this kind of business,\u201d RFA\u2019s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have told them not to go there, but some people just can\u2019t control themselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The brothel owners \u201care all from Chinese cities\u2014they are all Han Chinese,\u201d the clinic owner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese places are the main source of AIDS being spread through sex,\u201d agreed a former senior government official at the Office for AIDS Control and Prevention of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the outside, they look like legitimate spas or barber shops, but inside they are actually brothels,\u201d the former official, named Yadikar, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir numbers are increasing throughout the southern Uyghur region because of migrants from China\u2019s other cities, and the government does not restrict them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Numbers climbing<\/strong><\/p>\n By the end of October, 38,283 cases of persons currently infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS had been reported in Xinjiang, with 62 percent of these cases believed to have resulted from sexual activity, according to a Nov. 24 report by the region\u2019s Health and Family Planning Commission cited by Chinese state media.<\/p>\n The rate of sexually transmitted infection in Xinjiang may be even higher, though, Memet Imin, a senior researcher at the Medical Research Center of New York\u2019s Columbia University, said.<\/p>\n \u201cI have watched the Uyghur AIDS situation closely since 2002,\u201d Imin said.<\/p>\n Since the first case of AIDS was reported in 1995, the disease has spread at a rate of 25 to 30 percent each year, Imin said, “and from October 2014 to October 2015 we have seen that more than 85 percent of newly registered cases contracted the virus through sexual contact.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the southern Uyghur region, and especially in Kashgar and Hoten, we have never seen these many AIDS cases before,\u201d Imin said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing them mainly among farmers who haven\u2019t abused drugs or traveled to other parts of the country, so this may have something to do with the number of prostitutes who are encouraged to come to the region.”<\/p>\n Programs cut back<\/strong><\/p>\n Though large-scale educational programs were formerly held across affected areas, these efforts were cut back or abandoned during the last two years, former government official Yadikar, who now lives in the U.S., said.<\/p>\n \u201cLocal governments did not want us to come because of the pressure of [political] stability work,\u201d Yadikar said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said that it would undermine \u2018stability\u2019 to gather large numbers of people in any one place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brothels owned and staffed by Han Chinese are the main source of infection, experts say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}