You Can't Make Mistakes.

Curious, thoughtless sentencing practices

This article outlines a recent series of arrests here in Egypt.

Let’s just take for granted that the the persecution which is outlined in the article is pretty terrible. Let’s take for granted that these were citizens minding their own business and not hurting anybody. I am not really interested in all of that. What I am interested in is this: if you are going to sentence gay men who are HIV positive for a crime, how can you justify sending them to prison?

It just doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution: place these men in an environment in which they will regularly be raped by prison guards and other inmates, exposing all participants to HIV infection.

Now, as my roommate pointed out—quick, she is—because these are high profile cases, this will likely not be the case: everyone will know that they are positive and go nowhere near them. “Or they will more likely just be beaten to death,” I replied.

Our favorite part was the condition that these men would be required, after the end of their sentence, to sleep at the prison, from the hours of 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning. This would, ostensibly, ensure that they are not out in the night performing acts of debauchery. Right, exactly, because you can only have debauchery at night. Silly me, I had forgotten.

It seems that a better solution to the problem of HIV is education and taking precaution. The current solution everywhere in the Middle East and North Africa—remaining quiet and pretending like there is no problem—seems to be failing. Not in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia though: they have a zero HIV/AIDS infection rate! [Only 0.002 percent lower than Egypt!] Amazing! I wish that they would publish more information about how that has been accomplished. It certainly isn’t through education on safe sex—I base this conclusion anecdotally on the information provided to me by Saudi friends back Stateside, data which was not collected in a rigorous study.

In Egypt as well, when applying for a student or resident visa, one must supply the negative results of a blood test for HIV. If the blood test is positive, then a visa will not be granted at all. I assume that this is done in order to keep that low, low infection rate down. Maybe it works, to some degree, but it certainly could be augmented by a wider effort at sexual education. Public service announcements even.

Don’t even get me started on public service announcements.

Maybe things are changing though. I recently noticed, during a stocking-up trip to Carrefour, that there were now a wide variety of condoms available on the general merchandise shelves. This is new. It use to be the case that if you wanted to condoms in Egypt, you had to go to a pharmacy and then sort-of trick the pharmacist into selling them to you. You couldn’t be too overt about why you wanted the condoms—as if there is any other use for them: “These make great water balooons!”—and simply explain that maybe you needed them for a friend. Often, pharmacists would—after putting an individual through the embarrassment of asking in the first place—simply indicate that they did not have them, and direct you down the road. This is apparently changing. I have now seen them in plain view in a number of pharmacies, especially in expat parts of town, and then at Carrefour, which is obviously marketed toward expats. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t Egyptians buying them.

I would call this a step forward. Another step would be transparency about actual infection rates for STDs, but I feel that this might be a long way off. In the mean time, a word to the wise traveling in Egypt: keep it in your pants.