With 80 percent of new HIV cases in China among gay men, HIV positive males feel the heat from society and government. On Wednesday, an HIV-positive man from Guangzhou lost his arbitration case on the ground that his health status was used to stop him from working.
Global Times reported that when the man was discovered to be HIV positive when he underwent physical examination in April, he was suspended from his job at a public agency in Guangzhou Province. He requested to be reinstated, but the local labor dispute arbitration committee in the province rejected his request.
It turned down the man’s request based on regulations governing the prevention and treatment of infectious ailments which mandate quarantine for HIV-positive people until they are proven they are no longer infectious.
With the committee’s decision, Qiu Hengyu, the man’s lawyer, said the former public employee would file an appeal with the People’s Court of Baiyun District in the same province. He would also asked the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), which issued the rules that the committee cited in rejecting his request to be reinstated, to explain why HIV positive people must be quarantined.
The lawyer pointed out that the committee ignored a law approved by the National People’s Congress that excludes HIV carriers from the need to be quarantine. Peng Yanhui, LGBT Rights Advocacy China director, pointed out that while it has been a decade since the Rules on AIDS Prevention and Treatment took effect in 2006, its goal to ensure HIV positive people enjoy equal employment rights was never reached.
According to Financial Times, in 2015, newly diagnosed HIV cases in China increased by 15 percent or about 100,000 people. However, NHFPC Deputy Director Wang Guoqiang said overall infection rate and number of HIV and AIDs cases was at a relatively low level.