Lewis blasts Harper, Bush on AIDS policy
South Africa's Mbeki 'beyond redemtion'
The Ottawa Citizen
by Chris Cobb
Saturday August 19, 2006
TORONTO - In an emotional speech, punctuated with sharp barbs against the Harper government,
the Bush administration and South Africa, UN special AIDS envoy Stephen Lewis closed the International AIDS Conference
Friday with a fiery condemnation of negligence and bloated bureaucracies.
Mr. Lewis, whose five-year tenure as special envoy to Africa ends in December, lambasted aid
agencies for spending too much money and time on bureaucratic pursuits rather than devoting resources to work that
directly benefits HIV/AIDS victims across the world.
"What has to happenis that we place a temporary moratorium on the endless, self-indulgent
proliferation of meetings, seminars, roundtables, discussion groups, task forces ad nauseum, plus the production
of reports, documents, monographs, statistical data and concentrate every energy at country level," he said.
Mr. Lewis criticized the Harper government for not responding to fears over the future of
Vancouver's safe-injection site for intravenous drug users. The site's three-year exemption from federal drug
laws expires next month but, despite numerous appeals, the government has yet to announce whether it will extend it.
"It would be positively perverse to close the Insite safe-injection facilitywhen it has been
positively evaluated in a number of studies," he said. "In fact, there should be several more such facilities.
To shut Insite down is to invite HIV infection and death. One has to wonder about the minds of those who would
so readily punish injecting drug users rather than understanding the problem for what it is: a matter of public
health."
Mr. Lewis described the the Bush administration's insistence that a third of the U.S. AIDS
prevention budget is spent on abstinence programs as "ideological rigidity."
"Abstinence-only programs don't work," he told the crowd of 6,000. "Ideological rigidity never
works when applied to the human condition. It's an antiquated throwback to theconditionality of yesteryear to tell
any government how to spend its money for prevention. That approach has a name: neo-colonialism."
But Mr. Lewis's harshest criticism was reserved for the South African government, which he described
as "obtuse, dilatory and negligent"in its approach to AIDS treatment.
"It is the only country in Africa whose government continues to propound theories more worthy
of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state. Between 600 and 800 people a day die of AIDS in
South Africa. The government has a lot to atone for. I'm of the opinion they can never achieve redemption."
AIDS activists have long criticized South African President Thabo Mbeki and his government for
being in a state of denial over AIDS while ignoring scientific and medical evidence long accepted by the rest of
the world. Mbeki has attempted to have Lewis fired from his envoy position over previous criticism of his
government.
But Mr. Lewis was unapologetic Friday.
"There are those who say I have no right, as a United Nations official, to say such things
of a member state,"he said. "I see my job as advocating for those who are living with the virus. It is not my
job to be silenced by a government when I know what it is doing is wrong."
Mr. Lewis also accused G8 countries, including Canada, of breaking their funding promises to
developing countries. "Everything in the battle against AIDS is put at risk by the behaviour of the G8," he said.
"The issue of resources makes or breaks the response to the pandemic. It is imperative that the delegates here
never let the G8 countries off the hook."
Mr. Lewis, who is campaigning for the creation of a United Nations agency for women, drew
thunderous applause and cheers when he told the audience he has asked that he be replaced in the envoy job by
an African women.
"Reproduced with permission - Ottawa Citizen
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