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MEDIAWATCH: Junta crackdowns may trigger Myanmar HIV epidemic
Written by: Joanne Tomkinson
A novice monk watches police and military officials charge at monks and bystanders outside the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon in September 2007.
Government crackdowns following last year's pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar are having unexpected - and potentially disastrous - consequences, according to British newspaper The Times. The country commonly known as Burma already has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Asia, and the chances of a HIV epidemic in the country are now increasing due to restrictions on aid workers, the paper reports. Hostility towards international organisations has intensified since mass demonstrations by monks and democracy activists last year presented the biggest threat to Myanmar's secretive military junta in two decades, The Times says. British agencies Save the Children and Marie Stopes International have suspended programmes in the country's second largest city, Mandalay, after local authorities said the groups had been issuing propaganda on behalf of opposition organisations. They vehemently deny the accusation. Authorities have banned foreign NGOs from taking part in work that takes them outside their offices - stopping them from delivering food aid to thousands of AIDS patients and making outreach programmes, like those that promote safe sex messages and the use of clean needles, impossible to continue, The Times says. Doctors inside Myanmar believe the country's HIV rates are increasing, though official statistics show a decline since the beginning of the decade. "People are suffering because the government is not doing enough but the international community is also letting them down," Andrew Kirkwood, programme director for Save the Children in Myanmar, told The Times. The country receives the least international aid of the poorest 50 nations, according to the paper. Due to concern that aid indirectly helps the military junta, governments like the United States have been reluctant to give more. Some aid agencies, however, believe that this lack of funding is an even bigger threat to those in need of humanitarian assistance in Myanmar than the government's restrictions.
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