CARAM Asia's Letter to The Jakarta Post

Monday, August 24, 2009

The following letter was published by The Jakarta Post on August 24th.

Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM) Asia and its members Solidaritas Perempuan (SP) from Indonesia and Action for Health Initiatives (ACHIEVE) from the Philippines would like to respond to the article dated August 13th entitled ‘Proposed mandatory testing HIV test for migrants hailed’ by Ridwan Max Sijabat. As a regional network of non-governmental organisations and civil society groups working on the field of HIV and AIDS and migration who formed the migrant representation at the recent International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), CARAM Asia and its members would like to express our deep concern for the content laid out in the aforementioned article and the manner in which it misrepresented migrant worker’s attitudes towards mandatory testing.

Mandatory testing remains a deeply discriminatory practise that continues to deny people the right to mobility and dignity due to their HIV status. Furthermore studies by the World Health Organisation (WHO) continue to demonstrate that such practises fail to contain the virus and merely identity HIV and AIDS as that of a foreign problem. As a leading regional organisation, CARAM Asia has campaigned against such stigmatizing practises and has launched a considerable number of research projects and publications documenting migrant’s experiences on this issue.

This was one of the key issues that CARAM Asia’s delegation raised at ICAAP in our Migrant Forum, other sessions, and in our subsequent recommendations to the congress. Yet despite this, without attending any of our sessions or asking our opinion on this matter, the author instead identified anonymous ‘ex-migrant workers from the Philippines’ as the premise for substantiating migrant attitudes towards the use of mandatory testing. Had he attended our sessions, he would have heard directly from migrant workers from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines who related their degrading experiences with mandatory testing and deportation, and spoke in opposition to this stigmatizing and discriminatory policy and practice.

The article also contained a misconstrued reference on the views of the Chairperson of the National AIDS Commission (KPA) Nafsiah Mboi. Ridwan Max Sijabat then wrote a follow up article entitled KPA strongly rejects mandatory HIV test for migrant workers dated August 15th correcting the position of the KPA due to errors made in the initial article. However, the latter article still failed to identify the ex-migrant workers from the Philippines who allegedly gave their support for the use of mandatory testing.

CARAM Asia has written to Ridwan Max Sijabat in order to seek clarification on this issue but he has so far failed to respond to our email inquiry. As a result we would politely ask The Jakarta Post to include this statement within their next publication in order to correct the misrepresentation of migrant voices on the issue of mandatory testing. While we appreciate that mistakes are sometimes made in journalism this instance reflects very badly on the journalistic credibility of the author and serves as a great injustice to the migrant workers who attended and courageously gave their testimony at this year’s ICAAP.

Signed

CARAM Asia

Solidaritas Perempuan (SP)

Action for Health Initiatives (ACHIEVE)