News by the HIV Justice Network

A 24 year-old migrant has been arrested in a suburb of Toronto accused of aggravated sexual assault because he did not disclose his HIV status to a 21 year-old woman with whom he had consensual sex earlier in the year….

An influential Ugandan judge has joined President Museveni in calling for tough laws for criminal HIV transmission. Justice David Wangutusi, director of Uganda’s Judicial Studies Institute told a judicial workshop on gender equality that HIV-positive husbands who conceal their HIV…

Just found this excellent blog posting from Leonard Link, originally posted on June 12th. Click here to read the complete posting. The Idaho Supreme Court spoke unanimously yesterday, upholding what may turn into something like a life sentence to an…

The US state of Delaware is proposing mandatory HIV testing of alleged sex offenders, within 48 hours of their arrest, if the alleged victim, or court, asks for it. Unlike the existing law, the bill does not require that the…

Egypt continues to criminalise people living with HIV, according to Human Rights Watch. Police and guards beat several of the men in detention. A prosecutor told one of the men that he had tested positive for HIV by saying, “People…

Angola’s government is considering a new law criminalising ‘intentional’ HIV transmission, according to a report from PlusNews, a UNAIDS-funded HIV/AIDS news and information service for sub-Saharan Africa. ANGOLA: Should intentional infection be a crime?LUANDA, 26 May 2008 Proposed reforms to…

The issue of whether someone with an undetectable viral load can be guilty of HIV exposure has been discussed in a US court for the first time – the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. In this extremely…

I have just written a news feature for aidsmap.com analysing the recent conviction of an HIV-positive man in Texas to 35 years in prison for spitting at a policeman. The first few paragraphs are below, but to read the article…

A new booklet, ‘Disclosing your HIV status’, produced by the New South Wales HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC) highlights that both public health and criminal laws mandate that diagnosed HIV-positive people in NSW must disclose their HIV status prior to any…

Update: 28th April. There have been fewer than 260 HIV diagnoses in Fiji since records began (I originally quoted a source claiming fewer than 30), so it must come as something of a shock for Fijians to have to come…

Here’s a first…a well-written, concise and balanced article on the repercussions of criminalising reckless HIV transmission in England & Wales, from this week’s edition of The Economist. HIV transmission: A modern bugbearApr 10th 2008From The Economist print edition AT FIRST…

I am incensed and outraged that journalist Charles Lavery (c.lavery@sundaymail.co.uk) has written, and the (Scottish) Sunday Mail has published, the article below. It features an interview from a complainant in an ongoing criminal HIV transmission investigation which names the man…

Following President Museveni’s call for the death penalty as the appropriate punishment for criminal HIV transmission last week, two articles have appeared in Ugandan newspapers criticising his approach. An editorial in Kampala’s newspaper, The Monitor, by Augustin Ruzindana, the Forum…

It has taken a year longer than anticipated, but the Crown Prosecution Service for England & Wales has finally published their policy on prosecuting criminal HIV transmission. Thankfully, the document bears almost no relation to the draft version originally published…

President Yoweri Museveni has given a speech calling for the death penalty for anyone who is found guilty of Uganda’s proposed criminal HIV transmission laws. “I am glad to learn that the parliamentary committee on HIV/AIDS is coming up with…

So much of the reporting I see on HIV-related ‘crimes’ is shoddy and scare-mongering, so I was pleased to see this follow-up story from ABC News online that highlights how hard it is to be infected with HIV by being…

Very interesting interview on aidsmeds.com with Dr Bernard Hirschel, of the University of Geneva, the lead author of the controversial Swiss consensus statement which said that successful treated individuals with an undetectable viral load for at least six months and…

The International AIDS Society has issued a statement following the arrest of ten individuals some of whom are HIV education and prevention workers. The full statement is below. Statement on the Criminalization of Sexual Orientation in Senegal19 February 2008 (Geneva,…

I spoke too soon in my posting yesterday regarding reassurances from Victoria’s chief health office, Dr John Carnie, on a new policy from the public health department about reporting HIV-positive individuals who did not disclose or use condoms to the…

An excellent new book on the criminalisation of HIV transmission by Dr Matthew Weait, senior lecturer in law and legal studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, has recently been published. The book, Intimacy and Responsibility: The Criminalisation of HIV…

A review of the Victorian Health Department’s management of ‘risky’ HIV-positive people has been published. The Age puts its own negative spin on the story, but somewhat reassuring is the response from Dr John Carnie, Victoria’s chief health officer. He…

A proposed change to Public Health law in the State of Western Australia would allow people with HIV to be detained and forced to undergo medical treatment. WA’s Public Health executive director, Tarun Weeramanthri, used recent concerns over a sex…

A Press release from the New Zealand AIDS Foundation highlights concerns over the forthcoming Public Health Bill to make HIV a notifiable disease. The NZAF supports the Bill as along as all the necessary epidemiological information remains anonymised. NZAF is…

The BBC NEWS website is reporting that four more men suspected of being HIV-positive have been arrested in Egypt, bringing the total to twelve. For more on this appalling human rights violation, see this post. “These cases show Egyptian police…

An interesting article from Bloomberg (which is usually more associated with business news than with HIV policy) on Singapore’s worrying plans to criminalise people who do not disclose they have previously had “unsafe” sex, and have “reason to believe” they…