ACT UP PHILADELPHIA * Media Release May 2, 2006 contact: Asia Russell, 267.475.2645 * for immediate release GLBT/AIDS Community Town Meeting on Human Rights Abuses in China: Activists Denounce ³Equality Forum² Honcho Malcolm Lazin¹s Choice of China as ³Featured Nation² for Philadelphia¹s National Gay Conference Saturday May 6, 3:00 pm, @ William Way Center, corner Juniper and Spruce [Philadelphia] The Equality Forum is a group headed by controversial gay entrepreneur Malcolm Lazin. The group organizes an annual gay series of events and meetings held in Philadelphia oriented towards the GLBT community. In the last several tears, Equality Forum has reconfigured itself as "The Global GLBT Event," and has chosen a "Featured Nation." The group's web page states: "Each year, Equality Forum honors an individual country that promotes progressive advancements and policies for its GLBT population." AIDS activists from Philadelphia, Boston and New York were dismayed when China was named as the 2006 "Featured Nation." In March this year, groups from around the world including ACT UP chapters in New York, Paris and Philadelphia had answered the call of hunger striking AIDS activists in China to protest the beating and kidnapping of dozens of people with AIDS. Demonstrations were held at Chinese embassies in a half dozen countries to demand their unconditional release. "It is crass beyond belief that Malcolm Lazin is peddling trade and travel junkets to China at a time when government repression of people with AIDS is finally coming to the attention of the world community," stated ACT UP's lead organizer Jose DeMarco. "As a gay man living with HIV, I cannot let Lazin get away with white-washing the truth. It is an insult to the queer community and to Chinese people with AIDS." On Saturday, May 6 at 3pm, ACT UP Philadelphia will host a town hall meeting to discuss a GLBT response to Equality Forum¹s decision to feature China as a progressive human rights leader. The forum will include a panel of experts, including Temple University's Professor Scott Burris, who has traveled and published extensively on law, human rights and health in China, and Katie Krauss of Physicians for Human Rights and the Director of the AIDS Policy Project, which led many of the international protests earlier this year. In China this past February and March just prior to the Chinese National People¹s Congress (NPC) when citizens can petition their government, dozens of AIDS activists were beaten, harassed, and ultimately kidnapped (or as they say in China, "detained") by the government. These people were attempting to reach the NPC or were organizing their own symbolic hunger strikes to protest government repression of activists. In the two weeks of the sessions of the NPC, China's capitol was placed under extreme security measures equivalent to the imposition of martial law, with anyone suspected of wanting to petition the deputies facing expulsion, interception, or arrest. At the same time, dozens of people with AIDS were held under house arrest to prevent them from reaching delegates during the National People's Congress. As a direct response to the demonstrations around the world, the Chinese government released prominent activist Hu Jia, who most recently served as director of Loving Source, a Beijing NGO that supports AIDS orphans. However, several others remain in custody. "ACT UP Philadelphia deplores China's harassment and detention of people with AIDS most of whom were infected as a result of official malfeasance during the blood selling scandals in the 90s," stated ACT UP member Waheeda Shabazz. "How could Malcolm Lazin be so ignorant and unaware of the human rights disaster in China?" -end- Jose de Marco Josemarcos9@yahoo.com ACT UP Philadelphia actupp@critpath.org POB 22439 C 215 756 4756 215 386 1981Philadelphia Pa, 19110 ______________________________________
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