Make AIDS history, not people

Issue 

A snap candlelight vigil was held on April 20 against PM John Howard's proposal to ban refugees and migrants with HIV/AIDS from entering Australia. The protest, attended by around 100 people, was organised by National Union of Students queer officer Peter Johnson and endorsed by the Queer Students Network, Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) Sydney and the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC).

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle told the protest the proposal "clearly sends a message of discrimination" and that "Asylum seekers are continually ruled out before they are even deemed asylum seekers".

CAAH's Rachel Evans told Green Left Weekly that "Currently Australia is spending $50 million on Christmas Island to turn it into another Guantanamo Bay. We could be using this money to adequately fund solutions to the HIV/AIDS crisis."

Richard Jones from Amnesty International told Green Left Weekly that 25 million people in Africa currently don't have access to adequate medical treatment and that Howard's proposal would be excluding many from accessing adequate health care. "Internationally people are now faced with whether they leave behind their family to escape more torture or stay with their family and go through more torture. It's not people we should be targeting. It's the disease we should be targeting."

Comments

Dear Green Left Editor.

I am the original author of this Green Left article and since when did Green Left editors ignore the truth of green left history to make AIDS history and not the names of people history. My legal name that I had to fight to be legally known as since I was six weeks old is comrade shelly frances kershaw (formerly Shelly Ann Dahl) and I am a forgotten Australian intersex asexual liberation theologian born out of adultery and poverty. In CAAH Sydney, RAC Sydney and QSN we organised a snap vigil because John Howard had proposed to ban refugees and migrants with HIV/AIDS from entering Australia. This was an example of how people from many struggles and many protest groups can unite to fight to overturn government bans on refugees with HIV/AIDS whose only hope was to seek a future in countries with HIV/AIDS treatments. While governments spend millions of dollars on banning people to places of torture and death millions of refugees and forgotten children around the world will die in third world countries, places of war and denied equality in health care with limited to no resources in treating and curing HIV/AIDS. While the corparate media has a long history of deleting the names of the forgotten voices in this world Green Left was never used to be a paper that had a history of deleting the names of the original authors of Green left artcles who speak up for the forgotten voices in this world when others don't. 

God bless and love in struggle forgotten Green Left Journalist Comrade shelly frances kershaw+

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