‘Religious extremism’ is seen as a greater danger than the spread of the disease, sources say.<\/p>\n
2016-08-19<\/p>\n
Authorities in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region are allowing HIV infection rates to spiral out of control by favoring \u201cstability maintenance\u201d education over efforts to promote a better understanding of the disease and its causes, sources say.<\/p>\n
As of October 2015, about 38,238 people were living with HIV\/AIDS in Xinjiang, according to figures released by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Health and Family Planning Committee.<\/p>\n
Now, with 2,591 people in Xinjiang found to be newly infected during the first six months of this year, the HIV virus has swept \u201clike a flood\u201d across the region\u2019s mostly Muslim southern areas, a clinic owner in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture\u2019s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
Local authorities have meanwhile failed to control the disease\u2019s spread, RFA\u2019s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey believe that \u2018religious extremism\u2019 is a more dangerous threat than HIV\/AIDS, and have ignored the educational work that could prevent infections,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
The early spread of AIDS in Xinjiang was linked to drug use and occurred mainly in the north, but sexual transmission in migrant brothels now drives the climb in rates of infection among farmers and other young Uyghurs in Xinjiang\u2019s south, the source said.<\/p>\n
HIV-infected prostitutes working in massage parlors, barber shops, public baths, and \u201chotels\u201d are actively spreading the disease, \u201cbut nobody cares about this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe owners [of these facilities] all come from China\u2019s central and eastern provinces and cities,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are all Han Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say much about this, though. You understand what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Programs stopped<\/strong><\/p>\n Sexual transmission now accounts for more than 85 percent of all new infections across the Uyghur region, a former senior official at the Office for HIV\/AIDS Control and Prevention in the regional capital Urumqi told RFA.<\/p>\n And though officials hoping to fight the spread of the disease had formerly held large-scale educational programs each year focused on prevention, \u201csince 2014, these have all been stopped,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cLocal governments no longer want us to come because of the pressures of \u2018[political] stability work,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThey say that gathering large numbers of people in any one place is a threat to social stability.\u201d<\/p>\n China has vowed to crack down on what it calls religious extremism in Xinjiang, and regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.<\/p>\n But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur separatists, and that domestic policies are responsible for instability in the region and an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘Religious extremism’ is seen as a greater danger than the spread of the disease, sources say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2891","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\/2891","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=2891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}