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Faith groups help fight AIDS discrimination
Interfaith groups staged a rally in Jakarta on Saturday to promote a campaign against religious discrimination of those living with HIV/AIDS, who are often judged as "immoral" people in Indonesia's predominantly Muslim society
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Interfaith groups staged a rally in Jakarta on Saturday to promote a campaign against religious discrimination of those living with HIV/AIDS, who are often judged as "immoral" people in Indonesia's predominantly Muslim society.
The Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP), which organized the rally at the Hotel Indonesia street circle, lamented the government's sluggish measures to address HIV/AIDS issues and its failure to keep up with the rising number of infections.
"We support religious teachings that emphasize compassion and assistance to people with HIV/ AIDS, and we oppose any form of discrimination against them. Fight against the virus, not the patient," it said in a statement.
The ralliers marched through Jl. Thamrin in Central Jakarta and gathered at the Hotel Indonesia street circle to declare the formation of an Interreligious Youth Concerned about HIV/AIDS to observe this year's World AIDS Day that took place on Dec. 1.
The ICRP said religions still promote discrimination against people living with HIV/ AIDS, as they often suggest that the deadly virus is contracted via immoral behavior.
"In fact, people infected with HIV are not always those committing actions considered immoral, such as unprotected or casual sex. Some of them contract the virus by other means, such as through blood transfusions. So we cannot just put the blame on them," said ICRP secretary Johannes Hariyanto, who attended the rally.
"It would be dangerous if religious communities judge the patients as if they were God."
Noted pluralism campaigner Siti Musdah Mulia, also from the ICRP, said many religious leaders still considered people living with HIV/ AIDS to be "immoral", despite the fact that housewives had contracted the virus from their husbands.
She denied such a stigma only came from Muslim leaders, although said Islam as a religion posed the strictest opposition to casual sex.
"We cannot blame them (religious leaders). They hold their views because they lack information about HIV/AIDS," she told The Jakarta Post from Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
HIV has reportedly infected around 33 million people globally, including two million children under the age of 15. There were an estimated two million HIV-related deaths last year.
The number of Indonesians with the virus has more than doubled from 120,000 in 2002 to 270,000 this year, according to the Association of Indonesian Physicians Concerned about HIV/ AIDS.
These figures are much higher than those reported by the Health Ministry, which put the number of cases at 18,000 as of September, with the death rate at 20 percent.
