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Burmese military reported to have murdered HIV-infected prostitutes

The Burmese authorities are reported to have killed HIV-infected prostitutes as a way of preventing the spread of AIDS, this years International Conference on AIDS was told in July.

Health workers in Thai women’s projects say Burmese women abducted to work as prostitutes in Thailand are afraid to go back home after hearing that some returning prostitutes have been injected with cyanide by army officers. Some of the women sold to Thai brothel-owners are as young as fourteen. Many have left their homes in search of work and were forced into prostitution after being kidnapped and tortured.

There were an estimated 300,000 HIV positive cases in Thailand in 1991. Burmese girls are perceived as being ‘AIDS-free’ due to their age, because AIDS is not reported in Burma and because Burma is a ‘closed country’. They do not stay ‘AIDS-free’ for long.

In Burma censorship of the media, the government’s disregard for AIDS prevention schemes and its opposition to all forms of birth control make the spread of HIV almost impossible to control. Already there are reports of a 70 per cent rate of infection among prostitutes of more than one year along the northern Thai-Burma border.

Prostitution has increased inside Burma itself due to economic hardship. The Burmese traditionally have a high respect for women. But it is Burma’s prime position in the international heroin trade which makes the country a veritable AIDS time bomb.

Burma has no education programme on AIDS. Zunetta Lidell of the Burma Action Group says: ‘There is a lot of evidence that the military government is actually encouraging young people to take drugs in order to keep down dissent. There are not enough clean needles in the hospitals and the gtovernment is not even trying to look as if it is doing anything.’

The Burmese health system, like other institutions in the country, is crumbling. Doctors have fled political repression and there are few funds for basic healthcare, with 60 per cent of government money reportedly being spent on fighting wars in the north and maintaining internal control. Blood is rarely, if ever, screened.

Burmese experts fear that, if nothing is done, the government will continue to use drugs and AIDS as political tools, and that may even threaten the survival of some ethnic minorities living on the China-Burma border, the so-called ‘AIDS route’.

Contact: Burma Action Group, 84 Long Lane, London SE1 4AU