Police accused of choking war on HIV/Aids by destroying condoms

The Kenya police and others from five countries were the subject of some very unkind words at the ongoing international Aids conference in Melbourne, Australia.

Kenya’s Ministry of Health through several outreach groups distributes condoms to sex workers mainly in urban areas, but a Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) study presented at the forum says policemen trail these workers harass them, arrest their clients and destroy the products since prostitution is illegal.

The 20th International Aids Conference was told how corrupt police officers in Mombasa and Nairobi trail social workers distributing condoms to prostitutes and pounce on both to demand bribes, sex or threaten them with arrest.

Fida and the Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Programme accused the police of routinely collecting and destroying condoms from distributors and users hence seriously hurting the fight against HIV/Aids.

“While one arm of Government is working to get condoms into people’s hands, another is taking them away,” Megan McLemore of the international Human Rights Watch told the meeting yesterday.

The study, Criminalising Condoms, was carried out in Kenya, Namibia, Russia, South Africa, the US and Zimbabwe. Locally, it was done by Fida and the Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Programme through an international NGO, Open Society Foundations.

The delegates heard of how police routinely destroy condoms confiscated from sex workers by burning them, stepping on them, driving over them with cars, tearing or cutting them up, and throwing them in the gutter.

Police find themselves in a dilemma because prostitution is illegal and there is no way they can officially justify helping sex workers break the law.

Two months ago, the Nairobi County government passed a law that plans to drive out all sex workers from the Central Business District, a move that is seen by health authorities as retrogressive in the fight against HIV/Aids.

Take notice

While it was not the first time the same study has been presented at an International Aids forum, the Melbourne meeting was categorical that it is not a crime for anybody to carry a condom anywhere and at whatever time.

Police and prosecutors in the five countries, the forum heard, cite condom possession as evidence of a person’s engagement in sex work, to justify an arrest and as a basis for securing a conviction on prostitution-related charges.

“Sex workers express fear about being caught with condoms by police and the risk that police will use their possession of condoms as a pretext to take them into custody or demand a bribe,” McLemore told the meeting.

“Corresponding guidelines should be issued to judges and magistrates instructing them to stop accepting the possession of condoms as evidence that one is a prostitute,” he added.

The meeting recommended that lawmakers start a process of legalising commercial sex work with the Ministry of Health presenting a draft law to Parliament explaining that making prostitution legal is crucial in the fight against HIV/Aids.

On Monday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the progress made in the fight against HIV/Aids may suffer unless special efforts are made to reach gays, drug injectors, sex workers, transgender people and people in prison and other closed settings.

WHO said transgender women and drug users are almost 50 times more likely to have HIV than the general population, while sex workers are up to 12-15 times more likely to have HIV.

However, because of stigma and discrimination, laws that penalise their behaviour, and their exclusion from national HIV response plans, these groups are least likely to seek care and treatment.