January 13, 2006

THAI TRADE TIRADE

We wanted to open this week's issue with these stunning photos from Chiang Mai, Thailand, where this week thousands of activists—many of them people with HIV/AIDS—raucously tried to shut down trade talks between Thailand and the U.S. that could lead to agreements seriously restricting Thailand's ability to make affordable anti-HIV meds.

(Thursday morning, we got word that Paisan Suwannawong, the pioneering Thai PWA whom Housing Works honored last year with its first annual Keith C. Cylar Award for international AIDS activism, wasn't at the protests because he is immersed in a U.N. Global Fund project—but that the group he founded, the Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group, was among the network of groups involved in the protests.)

Reports indicate that so many protestors Wednesday stormed the Sheraton Hotel where the talks were taking place that negotiators had to disguise themselves as tourists to leave the building and then relocate the talks at a golf resort miles away.

Protests reportedly have ceased for now (not before protesters burned the fake coffin of top Thai negotiator Nitya Phibulsomgram—see photo second from top), but organizers threaten to come back strong if their government doesn't hold its promise to retain for its citizens access to affordable, lifesaving medications in the final agreement. The very latest stories from Thailand on Thursday morning U.S. time report that Thai negotiators are calling "unacceptable" certain American demands that would limit Thailand's access to affordable medications.

"This was the largest anti-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) demonstration that Thailand has ever seen," Karyn Kaplan of Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group e-mailed us from Thailand Thursday night her time. "Approximately 10,000 people, including members of about a dozen national networks and local citizens from Chiang Mai and the surrounding areas stormed the two hotels where the talks were taking place...The protesters wanted to stop the negotiations immediately until the Thai public has been properly consulted, until the parliament has been able to consider the potential impacts, and until the government started being transparent about their negotiations.

"Thai people with HIV/AIDS said that the impact of the FTA on people's lives would hurt more than the sticks the police were using to beat demonstrators," Kaplan continued. "Thailand now provides over 70,000 people with HIV/AIDS with [anti-HIV] meds. Second-line therapy is already 10 times as expensive as [starting therapy], and Thailand only has about nine AIDS drugs...The government will have to pay hundreds of millions more baht toward their health budget in the future if they sign this agreement, and all people who use the medicine in Thailand will feel the impact."

Meanwhile, Wednesday afternoon in D.C. at the offices of the U.S. Trade Representative, Health GAP and the Student Global AIDS Campaign conducted a parallel protest. "The Thai government manufactures what is one of the least expensive single-pill, triple-combination HIV regimens in the world," said HealthGAP's Paul Davis en route to the protest, "but in the service of Big Pharma, the U.S. Trade Representative is trying to make it impossible for the hundreds of thousands of people with HIV in Thailand to gain access to [such] affordable medication. We're demonstrating today in solidarity with people with AIDS in Thailand to roll back this U.S. push to limit access to affordable generic AIDS drugs in developing countries."

There's even something you can do right now to voice your opposition to the trade agreement: Send a fax (or many faxes!) to Victoria Espinel, acting assistant U.S. trade representative for intellectual property at 1.202.395.3891—and/or to Barbara Weisel, assistant U.S. trade representative for Asia-Pacific and Pharmaceutical Policy at 1.202.395.9515—with a short message like this:

"Halt the U.S.-Thai negotiations until activist voices are involved and intellectual property provisions that put profit over people are removed."

AIDS Issues Update will keep you posted on the trade agreements and the activist response in the months ahead. Wanna get more involved? E-mail Asia Russell at asia@healthgap.org or Matthew Kavanagh at mkavanagh@globaljusticenow.org. Also check out www.ftawatch.org.

The Housing Works AIDS Issues Update is reported, written and edited by Diana Scholl, David Thorpe, Phil Fox Rose, Christine Campbell, terri smith-caronia and Housing Works staff. Send your feedback, leads and story ideas to d.scholl@housingworks.org.

You can reach us by phone at 212-967-1500 x168, by fax at 212-868-4222, and by email at d.scholl@housingworks.org. Housing Works provides housing, advocacy and services to homeless people living with AIDS and HIV. Housing Works is the nation's largest community-based AIDS organization and the nation's largest minority-controlled AIDS organization.

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