AIDS Debate Upsets Cambodia's Women Politicians

Cambodia's female politicians turned on their male counterparts on Tuesday, arguing that a legal focus on AIDS and women was ignoring the promiscuous men largely responsible for spreading HIV. Cambodia is attempting to enact its first-ever HIV/AIDS legislation aimed at promoting information about the disease and outlawing the sale of fake cures.

"Why should the law only be specific to girls and women?" female lawmaker Ly Kimleang asked during a heated debate. "Actually it's the men who become bored. They go out for sex with another woman and then spread the disease into their family." She spoke on behalf of 14 female members of parliament, arguing that women are victims of the disease spread by men, and that men and women should be written equally into the legislation.

A 2000 survey by the National Center for HIV/AIDS found that 169,000 people between ages 15 and 45 were living with HIV, and more than 80,000 had died of AIDS. That represents a solid decline from some 184,000 infections in 1999 and 210,000 in 1997. Critics, however, have argued that the numbers are skewed because AIDS patients in Cambodia are dying faster due to the high cost of treatment.

The figures were rejected by opposition leader Sam Rainsy. "The numbers of people infected or who have died of AIDS are more than the numbers provided by the government. I don't believe those figures," he said, arguing that more people have died of AIDS in the countryside, where authorities had failed to count, than in cities. "Between the next five to 10 years I believe that more people will lose their lives from AIDS than the amount of people who died during the Khmer Rouge times," he said in a reference to the 1975-79 era when up to 1.7 million Cambodians died through alleged genocide, starvation and forced labor.

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