February 15, 2008
LANTOS' LEGACY
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Rep. Tom Lantos 1920-2008 |
AIDS advocates expressed deep sadness about the death of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the lead sponsor of a bill to reauthorize and expand the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Lantos, who was 80 years old when he died, was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress and a committed champion of global human rights.
The PEPFAR authorization was the first major piece of AIDS legislation he had sponsored. AIDS advocates are confident that his death will stand in the way of the PEPFAR reauthorization, because there are other committed sponsors in the Democratic majority, but said Congress had a responsibility to continue the work Lantos took up with PEPFAR.
"The fight against HIV/AIDS has lost a real hero. His leadership will be sorely missed," said Global AIDS Alliance executive director Paul Zeitz, in a statement. "To preserve his legacy, we must ensure that policy on global AIDS meets the high standards he would have demanded."
Lantos was co-chairman and founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a group that highlights human rights violations around the world, and his achievements in standing up for human rights include introducing sanctions against the junta in Burma, his pivotal role in passing a resolution pressing the Japanese government to officially apologize for the thousands of women used as sex slaves during World War II, and being one of the members of Congress purposefully arrested in 2006 outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington to denounce the government's role in the killings in Darfur.
In a press release four days before he died, Lantos issued a statement chiding Republican opposition to the PEPFAR reauthorization, after the press conference where Republicans and their allies falsely claimed PEPFAR would fund abortion. "The draft of the new global HIV/AIDS reauthorization bill reaffirms Democrats' commitment to the vast majority of the programs and policies established by the law that my friend Henry Hyde and I wrote in 2003. Henry, God rest his soul, joined me and many of our colleagues five years ago in ensuring that a bipartisan bill became law by creating a $15 billion program that has saved countless lives in some of the poorest countries in the world. That legislation included compromises on issues important to those of us who were then in the minority. It is a shame that the current minority is failing to honor this spirit of compromise and is willing to endanger a valuable U.S. foreign policy program addressing one of the most serious health care challenges that humanity faces today."
An RHrealitycheck.org column by reproductive health advocate Scott Swenson, used Lantos' death as an opportunity to chastise Lantos' friend Bono (who sang at Lantos' memorial service) and other AIDS advocates who have tried to water down PEPFAR's committment to reproductive health in order to gain bipartisan support. Swenson wrote, "Some AIDS advocates seem too willing to appease, even though they know the scientific data, see the problems created by ideological politicians first-hand, and hear what public health experts around the world say. Bono's Debt AIDS Trade Africa and the Global AIDS Alliance are suggesting that Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee give in to ideological demands of the far-right. The bill is not even marked up or out of committee where less ideological Republicans can work with Democrats to strengthen the bill."