Discussion on the Unified Rights Protection of Persons with HIV/AIDS and Disabled Persons.

As for the HIV prevention, Chinese government has implemented a special policy, which is called "Four Types of Free Service and One Kind of Special Care." "Four Types of Free Service" is to provide free anti-HIV drugs, free counseling and preliminary screening, free prevention of mother-to-infant HIV transmission and free HIV testing of newborn babies, and free education. "One kind of Special Care" is to give assistance to the people infected with HIV/ AIDS and their family members, who are in financial difficulties. In 2006, the Regulation of the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS was promulgated by Chinese State Counsel, which makes the protection of the rights of the persons with HIV/AIDS legitimized. This special protection has helped relieve the severe state in this field. But it also gives us such an impression that AIDS is so dreadful and infectious, which makes those with HIV/AIDS live in lonely state and deepens the discrimination against them. Thus, the special protection for them in policy and law should be changed to general protection. In order to transform the special protection into general protection, the persons with HIV/AIDS should be included by disabled law, and such legal protect models from international community could be introduced. The first model, of which French law is an example, is to give "health status or handicap" in anti-discrimination law an amplified interpretation, in order to make those persons with HIV/AIDS included in disabled people. The Canadian law belongs to the second model, according to which the discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS is regarded as the discrimination against disabled people based on judicial interpretation. The third model is accepted by UK, Australia and Hong Kong, which stipulates that those persons with HIV and AIDS should be regarded as disabled people. Because China has no anti-discrimination law, it is impossible to have legislative or judicial interpretation. So it is suitable to adopt the third model in China, that is to perfect The Law of the Protection of the Disabled Persons of the People's Republic of China as to incorporate those people with HIV/AIDS into disabled people. But at present this law still holds such view that disability is just physical defect, other than "social disabilities" or "the result of suppression of human rights." Therefore, it is needed to change our understanding of "disabilities" before perfecting the law of the protection of disabled persons. In addition, there are still some structural factors which hinder the Unified Rights Protection of Persons with HIV/AIDS and Disabled Persons. In China, both the people with HIV/AIDS and disabled group belong to vulnerable group, and have the burdens of discrimination from society, so it is possible that they both would have the worry that it will deepen the discrimination against them when these two groups are included in the same law system. Furthermore, China Disabled Persons' Federation, founded in 1988, is an official and formal organization, which has made great achievement in rights protection of its members. While the State Council AIDS Working Committee, the official organization for the people with AIDS, was founded in 2004, and its subordinate organizations are weak, scattering over the places with high rates of HIV incidence. The real force supporting the rights protection of the persons with HIV/AIDS lies in all kinds of grassroots organizations, which, however, lack money and legal discourse. Although some organizations are legally registered as Folk-Run non-Enterprise Units, they must pay business taxes to the government, which makes their running harder. Thus, in order to unify the rights protection of both groups, it is necessary to change the concept of the government that the government should govern everything, to change its misunderstanding of grassroots organizations, and to strengthen their role in civil society.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]