Hong Kong Coalition of AIDS Service Organizations

(Ed. Note : The following was a statement from the Chairperson of the Hong Kong Coalition of AIDS Service Organizations, presented on RTHK Radio 3, On 27 June, 1999 in response to activities surrounding the opening of the Integrated Treatment Services at the Kowloon Bay Primary Health Care Centre. Residents from a housing estate in the neighbourhood have been protesting the opening of the centre for three years.)

HIV/AIDS related discrimination can range from almost imperceptible attitudinal hostility through physical violence. It can manifest itself in forms which appear reasonable and justifiable, or extremes of pathological behaviour. It is sometimes blatantly explicit, but more often subtle, sophisticated and difficult to define".

People who are stigmatised are usually considered deviant or shameful for some reason or other, and as a result are shunned, avoided, discredited, rejected, restrained or penalised.

If it is a goal of AIDS education efforts to give the public a realistic sense of the seriousness of AIDS and what is involved in its prevention, publicity surrounding AIDS has achieved this in the great majority of the population. However, AIDS publicity has aroused considerable, unwarranted anxiety in a large population, and has either spawned or reinforced socially divisive and hostile attitudes. Such attitudes have been adopted by a small group of people at Richland Gardens in Kowloon Bay.

The Hong Kong Coalition of AIDS Service Organizations is protesting government inaction in protecting the rights of healthcare workers and clients at the new Kowloon Bay Primary Health Centre and in enforcing the Disability Discrimination Ordinance.

The Disability Discrimination Ordinance clearly protects individuals from harassment and vilification. Harassment involves subjecting a person to psychological, emotional and physical discomfort. Harassment is essentially about power and punishment. It seeks to subject a person who is identified as worthy of punishment to treatment which in other cases would be deemed inappropriate or wrong, and it is assumed that the victim is powerless to stop such victimization.

At this point in time harassment is being inflicted on individuals who attend the Kowloon Bay Primary Health Centre. Anyone, clients or healthcare workers, entering or leaving the building is a target for harassment. An action group from Richland Gardens have obstructed the use of the public road by individuals associated with the Health Centre to the point where police have been forced to provide shuttle service between the Centre and the Kowloon Bay MTR (underground train) station.

The Action Group has also erected signs vilifying people living with HIV/AIDS.

Vilification involves making statements either verbally or in this case through banners about a group of people on the basis of their characteristics or of stereotypical assumptions about them which bring members of the group into hatred, ridicule or contempt.

Vilification is not simple criticism and the expression of moral objections to behaviour. It usually involves attributing blame to the group and its members for social evils, and suggests that they are worthy of blame, punishment and rejection.

Thus when banners read "HIV is a threat to children and the elderly." This clearly states that those members living with HIV are a threat to the community and are not welcome to receive services granted to everyone else.

The residents' protests have been ongoing for 3 years. Their fight with the government not to establish a mulit-purpose Health Care facility should remain just that, a fight with the government. The extension of their anger to people living with HIV is not warranted nor acceptable.

The Hong Kong Police, the Urban Services Department, and the Equal Opportunities Commission have failed to respond satisfactorily to protect healthcare workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS regarding these incidents.