Villagers displace HIV-positive child

Massive discrimination against an HIV-positive boy in China: school ban, exclusion and expulsion

19/12/2014

An HIV-positive boy was expelled from his village in China because of his illness. A petition was signed by 200 villagers, including the child's grandfather. The case of the eight-year-old Kunkun is currently causing indignation worldwide. In China, people living with HIV and AIDS are still being discriminated against and marginalized in schools, hospitals and on the job.

HIV-positive boy was expelled from his village for fear of contracting
"Nobody plays me, I play alone", quotes the news agency "AFP" the little Kunkun from the Chinese state press. Since the announcement of his HIV infection in 2011, the boy is no longer allowed to go to school, has no friends and even his grandfather, in whom the eight-year-olds lived so far, should have turned away from him. The petition, which expelled the child from the village, signed 200 citizens to "protect the health of the villagers," Chinese media said Thursday. In addition, the eight-year-old was referred to as a "time bomb". Although the boy is sorry for the villagers, according to Wang Yishu, head of the Communist Party in Shufangya Village, the HIV infection is "too scary for us," the news agency quotes the newspaper.

The eight-year-old, according to a report in the national newspaper "Global Times" infected with his mother with the HI virus. "She left the family in 2006. Even the father has no contact with his son".

According to the news agency, "many Chinese are currently outraged in their Twitter counterpart" Sina Weibo "." There is talk of reckless neglect and unfair treatment. In China, people with HIV or AIDS would often cause panic among their fellow human beings because there is insufficient education about the disease. According to official Chinese authorities, since the discovery of HIV in 1985, 497,000 infected individuals have been registered.

People living with HIV and AIDS are still being discriminated against in China
The behavior of the villagers, especially the relatives of the boy, seems heartless and unjust from a Western point of view. Nevertheless, it is not surprising to consider that HIV and AIDS sufferers have been massively discriminated against in the Chinese media for a long time. In addition, was "active sentiment against AIDS patients and wild rumors have been spread," about about marauding, syringe-armed HIV-infected, the other infected on purpose, "writes the magazine" Spiegel Online ". Large parts of the Chinese population therefore still believed that those affected were themselves responsible for their illness. To dissolve such prejudices requires a comprehensive education of the population about HIV and AIDS. (Ag)