German HIV Campaign - Positive Protests

posted: 08/09/2009

People living with HIV are furious about a new German HIV awareness campaign. It features Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein with the message AIDS is a Mass Murderer. It seems to say people with HIV are mass murderers for having sex. It does not even advise people to use condoms.
 

The campaign will run in German cinemas, TV, radio and on posters until December 1st, World AIDS Day. It is creating an international outcry. It's being promoted by the German HIV awareness organisation, Regenbogen e.V (Rainbow Association) whose web address is stopaids.de.

They are a regional community organisation based in Bavaria (capital Munich) in the SE Germany. Rainbow Association are funded by the district of Upper Bavaria, as well as by charitable bodies such as Rotary International and the Munich-Keferloh Lions Club .

The campaign has an English version on their website (try that link if you can't reach their website if that has crashed) and you can see everything there for yourself. You can view their TV / cinema advert video here. It is sexually graphic. Scroll down that page for the posters, radio MP3 and a music video - all part of the campaign.
 

The creators of the campaign defended it, amid growing criticism.

Das Comitee, an advertising agency in the city of Hamburg, in North Germany, said the advert's shock value was aimed at highlighting the dangers of unprotected sex, at a time when public awareness about the risks was diminishing. "We knew the face we gave to the illness could not be a pretty one," said Dirk Silz, the creative director. The advert was trying to "show the ugliness of the illness, not of AIDS victims", he added. 
 

Das Comitee said it had worked for nothing on the film, and had received a positive response so far. "If it wakes people up to the dangers of unprotected sex, we've been effective," Silz said.

People with HIV are outraged: the campaign shows people with HIV = mass murderers

But organisations representing people living with HIV across Europe have condemned it, saying it only adds to the stigma they already suffer by appearing to put them on a par with mass murderers.
 

The agency explain their campaign in English on their press page

HIV organisations condemn

But organisations representing people living with HIV across Europe have condemned it, saying it only adds to the stigma they already suffer by appearing to put them on a par with mass murderers.
 

Others criticised the campaign for failing to offer any prevention advice, such as to use condoms.

George House Trust comment

The campaign is wrong-headed for so many reasons, and we strongly suspect that the advertising agency who did a great deal of work for free, have set out to deliberately provoke, simply to get themselves publicity and business during the recession. Bennetton's advertisements have used this provoking tactic repeatedly.

The Rainbow Association has been foolish in the extreme.

Anti-HIV Stigma and discrimination is reinforced to an intense degree. If AIDS is a mass murderer was part of a British newspaper headline, we'd be complaining immediately to the Press Council, and for these adverts, to the Advertising Standards Authority.

AIDS as a cause of death is now uncommon in Germany and the UK. In North West England in 2008 31 people died an AIDS-related death. 24 died of other causes out of 5767 people diagnosed with HIV in this region.

With modern HIV treatments most people with HIV in the West will not die of AIDS or even get an AIDS diagnosis. (AIDS means having one of an official list of illnesses that can follow HIV infection at a late stage).

The advertising campaign should be about avoiding HIV and avoiding passing that on.

The advertising agency says that the advert was trying to "show the ugliness of the illness, not of AIDS victims" and this is simply nonsense. Using 'AIDS' rather than 'HIV' raises fear and stigma; the word victim makes people with HIV the murderers, and implies there is nothing the victims can or should do to protect themselves. 'The ugliness of the illness' makes people with HIV feel bad about themselves, and takes us back to the really unhelpful and wrong idea that you can tell, by looking, that someone has HIV.

There's no prevention message or advice on what to do, whether you are positive, negative, or don't know.
 

The campaign perversely ignores the German reality and statistics - most people with HIV and becoming HIV positive in Germany are gay men. Between 50 and 60%. But all the images are of heterosexual sex and the target for the message that is shown are white heterosexual German women. 

Showing white German women as the victims of history's mass-murderers does nothing to help the uninfected German gay men who are at the most risk.

This is one of the worst campaigns we can remember. It takes us back to the AIDS hysteria and clumsy government campaigns of the 1980s, see our report on the hospital detention in Manchester of a man with AIDS in Manchester, in 1985, for an example - the AIDS tombstone campaign.

Have a look yourself at their campaign and then tell them what you think, on their English message page.

Here's an improved version of google's automatic translation of what they say on their front page about their "AIDS is a mass murderer" campaign for World AIDS Day 2009.
 

"For the World AIDS Day campaign of Rainbow Association, our Advertising Agency 'The Committee', went back to basics. There will be additions to the comprehensive campaign in the coming weeks. Elements of the campaign leading up to World AIDS Day 2009 include TV and cinema commercials, viral adverts, a music video, radio adverts and posters.
Because of the alarmingly high numbers of people with HIV, our World AIDS Day campaign has a clear message: "AIDS is a mass murderer," which is the new slogan.
The greatest mass murderers of recent history are shown having sex. The campaign aims to shake people up, make HIV a central issue and stop the rise in unprotected sex. Because anyone can become infected. Visit the campaign here."
 

Based on Source with additional material

Elizabeth Pisani's comments in The Guardian speaks a lot of sense. Her blog is The Wisdom of Whores and is worth watching.

Canada - HIV Transmission 'Murders'

posted: 08/04/2009

A Canadian man who is thought to have recklessly transmitted HIV to seven women, two of whom died, has made legal history by becoming the first person ever to be convicted of first-degree murder for sexual HIV transmission.

The case has reignited the criminalisation debate in Canada, which has prosecuted more HIV-positive individuals for sexual HIV exposure or transmission than any other country in the world.

There are significant doubts about whether he was the source of infection including for both murder charges. An appeal is likely.

Two Murders, 10 sexual assaults

The trial, which lasted six months, ended last Saturday, when a nine-man, three-woman jury found Johnson Aziga, 52, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, ten counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of attempted aggravated sexual assault after deliberating for three days.

Mr Aziga, who was born in Uganda, came to Canada as a refugee in 1990 and was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1996. After the dissolution of his ten-year marriage in 1998, Mr Aziga dated several women that he met through his work as a research analyst with the Ontario government, and others that he met in bars in Hamilton, a suburb of Toronto.

Canadian Law: You must tell partners about HIV before sex

In October 2002, a newly diagnosed woman named Mr Aziga as a recent sexual contact. Since 1998, Canadian law has required individuals diagnosed with HIV to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners prior to sexual contact that may risk transmission, and Mr Aziga was ordered to practice safer sex under Section 22 of Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act. He was also required to provide a list of his previous sexual partners.

Canada uses its public health powers to order HIV+ people to use condoms

In March 2003, another newly diagnosed woman also named Mr Aziga as a recent sexual contact. The Hamilton health department issued Mr Aziga with a second public health order and informed the police, who put Mr Aziga under surveillance. He was arrested at his home in August 2003 whilst having unprotected sex with a woman who has since tested HIV-positive and identified in court as Ms C. She had been dating Mr Aziga since February 2003 and last year, she filed a C$6m (£3.3m) civil suit against Hamilton’s police and public health departments for allegedly being used as “bait.”.

Following a widespread media appeal from the police for more sexual contacts, and, in late 2003 and early 2004, the death of two of the women who had also named Mr Aziga as a previous sexual partner, Mr Aziga was eventually charged with two counts of first-degree murder and eleven counts of aggravated sexual assault. Canadian law mandates that if someone dies following aggravated sexual assault, then this automatically results in first-degree murder charges.

5 years waiting in jail before trial 

Mr Aziga, who has been in prison since his arrest in August 2003, went through six defence teams delaying his trial, which finally began in October 2008. The court heard evidence from all eleven complainants, seven of whom believed that Mr Aziga had infected them with HIV, including pre-recorded video and audio testimony from the two women who had died. Both claimed that Mr Aziga had not disclosed his HIV status to them before having unprotected sex, and that they would not have had sex with him had he done so.

One of the women, known as ‘S.B.’, died in December 2003 at the age of 51 as a result of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that was diagnosed in 2001. However, she was not tested for HIV until July 2002. She claimed that Mr Aziga infected her with HIV during the summer of 2000.

The second former sexual partner of Mr Aziga to die, known as ‘H.C.’, dated Mr Aziga for a year from October 2001. She was diagnosed HIV-positive in November 2002, began antiretroviral therapy a year later, but in April 2004 was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma and died in May 2004.

Doubts about science for source of infections

Bagambiire, the defence barrister, argued the Crown had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that H.C., 49, who died on May 19, 2004, and S.B. 51, who died in Dec. 7, 2003, were not already infected with HIV before beginning sexual relationships with his client.

The lawyer criticized Hamilton police for narrowly focusing their investigation on Aziga while ignoring evidence that the women may have been infected by another sexual partner.

"H.C. had two African lovers. Police focused on Aziga, who was born in Uganda, to the total exclusion of H.C.'s other lover, whomever she was with from 1999 to 2001," said Bagambiire.

He said H.C. told clinicians at an HIV clinic in Toronto where her health was being monitored by an immune specialist that she'd had three sexual partners since 1999 and that two out of three of the men had emigrated from Africa, where AIDS is endemic.

H.C., who met Aziga while both worked for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, was diagnosed with HIV in November 2002, about a month after their last sexual encounter and a year after starting a relationship with him.

"So we now have three players who are actively involved as sexual partners of the late H.C., any of whom could have given HIV to her," said Bagambiire.Several expert witnesses testified that although such rapid progression is rare, it is not unheard of."

Although Mr Aziga’s defence team raised doubts about the source of HIV in these women and several others who had other sexual partners in the same sexual network and who may also have shared a similar strain of subtype A, the jury instead believed the testimony of Dr Paul Sandstrom, director of the Public Health Agency of Canada's national HIV and retrovirology laboratories, who concluded that only Mr Aziga could have infected the seven complainants who were HIV-positive.

George House Trust comment

The defence doesn't seem to have called any expert virologist to challenge the evidence of Dr Sandstrom of the Public Health Agency on the links between the man and the women's  infections. In recent UK cases virologists have shown how fatally flawed several recent prosecutions cases were. Several recent UK cases have been dismissed because the women had other partners who might have been the source of HIV- such as the case in Manchester in February 2008. 

Science simply cannot prove person A infected person B with HIV. It can only prove the opposite - that the defendant couldn't  have infected the person. It can also help show how closely similar the infections are, but can't show who had the HIV first.

The lack of strong challenge to the virological evidence seems to have been a serious mistake by the Canadian defence.

Testimony from Dr Julian Gojer, a forensic psychiatrist hired by Mr Aziga's defence team to assess Mr Aziga's mental state and offer explanations for his behaviour appeared to backfire during cross-examination by the prosecution. Although Dr Gojer had found that Mr Aziga’s traumatic experiences as a younger man in Uganda and Kenya had resulted in a cognitive impairment that may have been exacerbated by his HIV infection, he also admitted that Mr Aziga was still capable of knowing that it was wrong to have unprotected sex without disclosing his HIV status.

During his summing up last Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Thomas Lofchik told the jury that if they found that the following nine elements were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, then they could find Mr Aziga guilty of murder:

• That he had unprotected, penetrative sex with both of the deceased women.
• That he was aware he was HIV-positive at the time of having sex with each woman.
• That prior to sex, he was aware that he was required by law to inform all prospective sexual partners of his HIV status.
• That he failed to disclose his HIV status to the two women.
• That the women would not have consented to unprotected sex had he disclosed.
• That both women were infected with his virus.
• That he caused the women's deaths by infecting them with HIV during sex.
• That he meant to cause the women's deaths, or meant to cause them bodily harm that he knew was likely to cause their deaths, and was reckless whether death ensued or not.
• That the aggravated sexual assault, the HIV infection, and the death of the two women were part of one continuous sequence of events forming a single transaction.

The jury found Mr Aziga guilty of both murder charges and ten of the eleven aggravated sexual assault charges, primarily because Canadian law essentially defines consensual sex without prior disclosure of HIV status as fraud.

Sentencing in May - automatic life of 25 years for murder

Mr Aziga will be sentenced on May 7th. A first-degree murder conviction leads to an automatic life sentence with no eligibility of parole for 25 years; each aggravated sexual assault conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Appeal expected

Mr Aziga has already instructed his lawyer to ask legal aid for more funding for an appeal.

Canadian prosecution protests

Although Mr Aziga’s double-murder trial is unique, almost 90 HIV-positive people have been prosecuted, and almost 70 convicted, of criminal HIV exposure or transmission in Canada since 1989. Canada's population is about half the UK's population. In the UK under 20 people have been prosecuted.

Some of Canada’s most prominent HIV clinicians, including Dr. Mark Wainberg and Professor Julio Montaner, have recently spoken out against such prosecutions, primarily on public health grounds.

Source and reports in the local paper

More discussion and other cases in Edwin's criminal transmissions blog