The 54-page report, “Fanning the Flames: How Human Rights Abuses are Fueling the AIDS Epidemic in Kazakhstan,” documents instances of violent police brutality, lack of due process, harassment and stigmatization that drive drug users and sex workers underground and impede their access to life-saving HIV prevention services.
“The Kazakhstan government can still turn the epidemic around,” said Joanne Csete, director of the HIV/AIDS Program at Human Rights Watch. “Government officials must stop victimizing drug abusers and help prevent discrimination against them in Kazakhstan society.”
Routine and sometimes violent harassment of injection drug users and sex workers by the police adds to their already marginal status in Kazakhstan. Drug users may be arrested for possession of very tiny amounts of narcotics, police find it easy to pin false charges on them, and they are convenient targets when arrest quotas need to be filled.
A number of injection drug users told Human Rights Watch they were reluctant to use needle exchange services even where they exist because of the fear of being detained or of being identified as a drug user. Sex workers, whose numbers have grown dramatically since the fall of the Soviet Union, regularly face rape, other violence and extortion by police.
People already living with HIV/AIDS also confront abandonment by their families, discrimination in access to government services and rejection in the workplace. Instances of required HIV testing of people in detention continue in spite of an official change in this policy. In addition, many HIV-positive people in Kazakhstan are segregated in prison. Few people with AIDS in the country have access to antiretroviral drugs, and injection drug users are particularly excluded from this treatment.
“When you have an epidemic where more than 80 percent of people with AIDS are injection drug users, excluding them from AIDS treatment is neither good public health policy nor respectful of their rights,” said Csete.
Human Rights Watch called on the government to end all forced HIV testing of detainees and segregation of HIV-positive prisoners and to institute a long promised pilot program of methadone treatment that would allow some heroin users to be freed of having to inject drugs. More broadly, the government should set a tone of tolerance and respect for the rights of injection drug users, sex workers and people with HIV/AIDS.
“The government has the power and the responsibility to inform people that drug addiction is a medical condition and that people living with AIDS deserve respect and compassion,” said Csete.
With 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, Kazakhstan is expected to benefit in the coming years from huge oil windfalls, which will drive up the stakes in the political system. Meanwhile, the Kazakhstan government has resisted political reform and its human rights record is deteriorating. Human Rights Watch has criticized the repression of opposition political movements in Kazakhstan and the stifling of the independent media.
