Thursday, October 17, 2002
Law giving those with HIV rights is a first
LEIGH JENKINS in Beijing Suzhou city has passed China's first law to protect the rights of people infected with HIV. Patients and their families are guaranteed equal access to employment, education and health-care under the law, which also bans employers from accessing patients' medical records. People who are denied equal rights or whose infection status is divulged may sue for up to 20,000 yuan (HK$18,800). The law also urges people to have HIV tests. National regulations issued in 1987 outlawed discrimination against people with HIV, but the absence of local laws left people with minimal legal recourse, said Wu Zhanren, Suzhou's Health Department director, who helped write the new regulation. "We felt there was an urgency to address these blind spots in the law, especially after seeing concrete examples of how people with HIV are often denied jobs and an education," said Mr Wu. The news follows a speech on Monday by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in which he warned that China stands on the brink of an explosive Aids epidemic. "The [Suzhou] plan is particularly strong because it requires the finance department to provide adequate funds for disease prevention, which I have not seen in other regional HIV legislation," said Chen Sheng, who runs the Fangben Legal Service in Suzhou. More than a dozen government departments are named in the regulation and given specific tasks. The media is urged to increase reports about HIV, schools are asked to provide sex education and the labour bureau is told to help Aids sufferers find work. But the new measures also contain contentious language about testing people for the disease, and say a person who knowingly transmits HIV can be sentenced to prison.
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Published in the South China Morning Post. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.
Thursday, October 17, 2002 Ransom offered to end hotel standoff MARK O'NEILL in Beijing and ASSOCIATED PRESS in Washington The husband of an American woman who has been under virtual house arrest for nine days in a hotel in the central city of Zhengzhou yesterday offered to pay a ransom to free her, her son and her brother. Camille Colvin, her five-year-old son, Griffin Guo, and her brother, Cal Elliott, are confined to a seventh-floor suite in the Sofitel Hotel in Zhengzhou while she negotiates custody of Griffin with her former husband and the child's father, Guo Rui. "We would pay money or whatever it takes to secure the safety of my wife, son and brother-in-law," Bob Colvin, a finance director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said from New York. Mrs Colvin's family says Mr Guo has demanded sums ranging between US$60,000 (HK$466,800) and US$130,000 to drop his custody claim. Mrs Colvin was awarded custody of the child by a US court when the couple divorced in 2000, but Mr Guo kidnapped his son from New York during a court-ordered visit in July and took him back to China. The FBI has issued a warrant against Mr Guo for child abduction. Chinese police have refused to enforce the custody order and told Mrs Colvin she must have Mr Guo's consent to leave China with the child. If no agreement can be reached, the dispute must go through the Chinese courts. Mr Guo told the Washington Post: "My son was born in China, we were married in China, so Chinese law should handle our case. My son is by right a Chinese. I am a Chinese. This should be decided in China." Mr Colvin said he was upset that the Chinese government was not intervening in the case. He said the US Embassy in Beijing had done what it could to help his wife, sending a diplomat with her to Zhengzhou. The US State Department said it had asked China to provide police protection for Mrs Colvin and her family. Department spokesman Richard Boucher said US officials were working with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials to try to resolve the case. Mr Boucher said US custody rulings were not automatically binding in foreign countries, and that China was not a party to an international convention that calls for the return of an abducted child to the parent who was granted custody. "But as in this case when there's a decision on custody that's been violated, the abducting party can be charged with international parental child abduction," Mr Boucher said. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said: "We have noted this specific case and we believe that it will be properly handled." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCMP.com is the premier information resource on Greater China. With a click, you will be able to access information on Business, Markets, Technology and Property in the territory. Bookmark SCMP.com for more insightful and timely updates on Hong Kong, China, Asia and the World. Voted the Best Online newspaper outside the US and brought to you by the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's premier English language news source. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published in the South China Morning Post. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.
