Young Uyghur men pass through a night market in Hotan in northwest China's Xinjiang region, April 16, 2015.
AFP
HIV/AIDS has been on the increase among young Uyghur men in the southern part of northwest China’s Xinjiang region due to an influx of infected prostitutes who have been transmitting the deadly disease since 2009, according to a Uyghur former health official and a professor with knowledge of the situation.
“Now HIV/AIDS is a most dangerous disease in the Uyghur autonomous region, especially among local Uyghurs,” said Feruk Pidakar (not his real name), a former senior government official at the Office for AIDS Control and Prevention under the Health Department of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the area’s formal name.
“It’s a more dangerous and harmful social phenomenon than the ‘unstable elements’ which are caused by so-called ‘terrorism’ and ‘religious extremism,’ according to the Chinese propaganda,” he said.
Pidakar, who is in his mid-30s said left China several weeks ago with his family to seek a better and safer future for his children in the United States.
He insisted on using an assumed name during an interview with RFA’s Uyghur Service because he does not want authorities to endanger the safety of his parents and other relatives who are still living in Xinjiang.
“Thousands of Han-Chinese immigrants moved to the southern part of Xinjiang with the government’s support,” he said. “Hundreds of prostitution houses opened under the guise of beauty salons, massage parlors or bathrooms in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu), Kucha (Kuqa), Kashgar (Kashi), Yarkant (Shache) and Hotan (Hetian).”
“AIDS/HIV-infected Han sex workers from China’s inner provinces sell [their services] in predominantly Han red-light districts in southern Xinjiang,” he said. “When we were in the south, some of the Uyghur parents and farmers complained to us that there were black-windowed minibuses loaded with Han sex workers that provided cheep sex to the young Uyghur farmers.”
Pidakar, who worked as a government official in the Office for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention in the regional capital Urumqi for more than 15 years, said his work there was stressful because of political pressure because due to the sensitive nature of his work.
Nearly 35,200 people in Xinjiang had contracted HIV/AIDS, and 8,400 had died from the disease, according to figures issued by the regional Heath and Family Planning Committee at the end of 2014.
Roughly 13,000 cases were in Ili (Yili) Kazakh Autonomous prefecture, 10,000 in Urumqi, 7,000 in Aksu prefecture, 5,000 in Kashgar prefecture and 2,000 in Hotan and Turpan (Tulufan) prefectures.
Local Uyghurs now account for 80 percent of HIV/AIDS victims in Xinjiang, which had the fifth highest number of cases of the disease among China’s regions and provinces, according to the Office for HV/AIDS Control and Prevention, Pidakar said.
“Compared to other ethnic groups, especially the Han Chinese, the number of HIV/AIDS-infected Uyghurs has increased dramatically since 2009,” he said.
Before 2008, most HIV-infected people had been concentrated in northern part of Xinjiang, including the cities of Ghulja (Yining) and Urumqi, and contracted the disease from infected needles they used to inject heroin, he said.
But since 2009, the HIV epidemic increased dramatically as a sexually transmitted disease in southern Xinjiang, especially in Aksu, Kashgar and Hotan, where now more than 90 percent of those infected are ethnic Uyghurs.
Sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS accounts for 78 percent of the current cases, he said.

Chinese riot police keep watch on Uyghur residents near a mosque in Urumqi following ethnic violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, July 10, 2009. AFP
Rapid spread among young men
The disease’s rapid spread among young Uyghur men in the south came about after the deadly July 2009 riots which prompted the Chinese government to step up its repopulation strategy and assimilation policy in the area by bringing in more Han Chinese to settle there.
“Hundreds of Han-Chinese immigrant prostitutes moved to southern part of Xinjiang recently in the last several years and have opened prostitution houses under the guises of beauty salons, bathrooms, massage parlors and disco halls,” he said.
The riots, which began as a protest in Urumqi, escalated into violent attacks mainly targeting Han Chinese. China’s armed police were called in to quell the unrest, which killed nearly 200 people, and injured more than 1,700 while leaving many vehicles and buildings destroyed.
Pidakar cited other factors that have contributed to the region’s “explosion” in HIV/AIDS among Uyghurs in southern Xinjiang: the government’s failure to organize sufficient preventive measures, health organizations spending money on treating AIDS patients rather than preventive measures, lack of HIV prevention workers, doctors and public awareness campaign designers, lack of regulations to ensure the medical privacy of HIV/AIDS patients, lack of classroom education on the disease; and authorities forbidding of the publication of information on the disease and public awareness campaigns in the region.
The first recorded case of an HIV/AIDS-infected person in Xinjiang was in 1995 in Komul (Hami), the most eastern prefecture that bordered China’s inner provinces and was heavily populated by Han Chinese, he said.
Before 2010, the place where Pidikar worked was previously called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Fangyizhan, or Center for Epidemic Control and Prevention.
But in 2011, when the number of HIV-infected people was increasing, the government established the Office for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention under the Center for Epidemic Control and Prevention to deal with the crisis, he said.
Nevertheless, some counties in southern Xinjiang still have only one employee who is responsible for HIV prevention work, and most material on the subject is published in Chinese, not the Uyghur language, he said.
“So most of the local Uyghur population, especially Uyghur farmers, have no knowledge and prevention methods regarding HIV/AIDS,” Pidikar said.
The transmission of HIV/AIDS in the northern part of Xinjiang has been partly controlled in recent years, but it has spread widely among Uyghurs men age 20-40 in the southern oasis towns, he said.
“Our investigation indicates that local Uyghurs make up the overwhelming majority of such infections in southern Xinjiang,” he said. “Today people refer to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region as ‘a Uyghur disease.’”

Uyghurs eat at a food stall in a night market in Hotan, April 15, 2015. AFP
Prevention work
Every year, the Office for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention organizes a team to send to the south to do HIV/AIDS prevention work, but its efficiency and effectiveness depends on how much support it receives from the local Party committee and Han Chinese first Party secretary, he said.
“To a large extent, the local authorities are focusing their main work on maintaining ‘stability’ and fighting the ‘war on terror,’ and refuse to do any kind of HIV/AIDS education or prevention work,” he said.
Uyghurs have complained that although the government has set strict rules banning Muslim praying, fasting and other religious activities to maintain ‘social stability’ and national security, it has failed to ban the illegal activities of Han sex workers and continued to allow red-light districts, he said.
“Previously, the Office for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention organized two public health education activities annually in every prefecture, but in 2014 and this year, the office could not arrange them for lack of government support,” he said, adding that officials instead focused on combating the ‘war on terror.’
Memetjan Sadir, a Uyghur sociologist who was an associate professor at a university in Urumqi before immigrating to the United States earlier this year, told RFA that when he used to travel to southern Xinjiang annually for research, he noticed signs of the increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“The authorities have left behind the rapidly increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region and instead focused on so-called ‘terrorism and religious extremism,’” he said.
He noted that security in Hotan had increased when he visited the area in July 2014 following the start of the Chinese government’s “strike hard” campaign to fight separatism, religious extremism and terrorism in Xinjiang. The campaign followed several violent incidents in the region, including a May 22 bombing at a market in Urumqi that killed 43 people, including the four attackers.
But when Sadir and a local Uyghur friend visited a street dominated by Han immigrants in Hotan city, he could not believe his eyes when he saw hundreds of Han prostitutes standing in the doorways of beauty salons, massage rooms, bathrooms and cafes, beckoning in different Chinese dialects and accents to young men who passed by.
“I saw dozens of armed police patrolling just at the entrance of this red-light district with armored cars,” he said.
His colleague said the red-light district had only appeared there in the last several years, and local authorities turned a blind eye to it.
“Educated Uyghur citizens and government employees know that the immigrant Han sex workers are infected with the HIV/AIDS virus, but nobody dares to complain about them,” he said. “If they speak openly, they know very well that they will be accused of the crime of ethnic separatism or religious extremism.”
The sex workers were also loaded onto minibuses with blacked-out windows and driven to the countryside or villages to sell cheap sex services, he said.
“So young Uyghur farmers have become infected with HIV/AIDS through sexual transmission,” Sadir said. “Neither the government nor the local police controls this issue. Their eyes are always blind to this kind of thing. Actually, they give it the green light.”
Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
중국여자들(한족)은 신장 위구르 자치구의 마사지팔러,미용실,사우나,디스코홀등지에서 위구르족 젊은 남자들 에게 싼 가격에 성매매를 하고있다.[39] 이들은 심지어 업소를 벗어나 시골지역 마을까지 찾아가 위구르족 남자들에게 성매매 한다. 위구르족의 성병증가율이 급증하고 있어서 위구르인들이 항의를 하고 있으나 정부는 방관하고 있다
중국정부가 위구르 지역에 고의적으로 성병걸린 한족창녀들 수출해서 성병감염 ...
무슨 영화네요 ...........
별짓거리를 다하네요
서구열강이 북아메리카나 남아메리카 처음 개척시대때 질병환자가 쓰던 담요 원주민한테 주는식으로 전** 전파해서 몰살시키던 생각 나네요
콜럼버스가 미대륙을 발견한 후... 막대한...자원과 노동력을 가져가고...
매독을 선물해 준 것과 흡사하네요...
cf. 다만, 당시의 유럽인들은 매독에 대한 관념이 별로 없었고, 병의 전파 원리를 잘 몰랐지만...
지금의 짱개놈들은 일부러 위구르자치에 대한 핍박을 하기위해...
병을 전파한다는 차이는 있네요..
반대인데요, 매독은 아메리카에서 유럽으로 건너간 것입니다. 1493년 바르셀로나에서 창궐한 걸로 위키에 나와요. 1492 콜럼부스 미국발견 직후 이죠.
아~~~그렇군요.... 음...
제가 반대로 알았네요 ^^
유럽에서 건너간 질병이 뭐 하나 있었는데...
천연두였나????
매독은 모르겠습니다.
다만 아시아유럽은 몽고때도 서로 전쟁하면서 천연두,페스트 같은거 같이 공유해서 면역력이 있었고.. 아메리카대륙 고립되어 있어 면역력이 전혀 없었고..
아메리카대륙에 원주민들이 죽어가는 속도는 총칼보다 빨랐죠.. 콜롬버스 상륙 이후 일주일인가? 만에 왕이랑 왕족이 천연두에 걸렸다고하죠...
달리기로 전령들이 소식을 왕에게 전달 했는데 천연두 전파속도가 같아버림.. ㅠㅠ
아마 이거 기억하고 말씀 하시는거 아닐까? 싶네요..
아무튼 뭔 질병 하나가 아메리카 대륙으로 건너갔다고 알고 있습니다.
그게 원주민들 한테...치명적이었다고....
그나저나 매독이 북아메리카의 질병이었다고 한다면....
15세기 이전 유럽과 동양 에는...매독이 없었다는 건가???
(유럽의 대표적 성병은 임질이었다는 것이 정설이기는 한데...
로마시대의 문란한 성관계를 보자면...매독이 창궐 안한게 이상하기는 하기도 하고...)
근데....그 이전의 동양의학(12세기원명교체시기)에서는...창병(매창)이라고 해서 이미 매독에 대해서 치료하려는 시도가 있었고...
유럽에서도 창궐했다는 15세기.......로부터 백년도 안된 시점에
그것이 성병이라는 것을 알게되었다는 것은??? 조금 이상하기도 합니다(바로크와 고전파 음악가들의 매독감염이 많았고 그들은 매독이 성병이라는 것을 알고 있었음)
아무튼 이상하네요....
중남미의 대제국 잉카제국은...천연두 때문에 무너졌다는 것이 거의 정설로 알려졌습니다.
몽고족한테 크게 당한 원나라를 몽고초원으로 몰아낸 명시대에도 성병을 몽고족에 전파하여 인구감소를 시켰다고 하네요
와 여탑분들 클라스 ... 이거 역사덕후들만 아는 사실인줄 알았더니.. 상식들 대단하신듯 여기분들 눈팅만 해도 ...수준이 다 높으신듯
몽골이 그렇게 당했죠..
와 여탑분들 클라스 ... 이거 역사덕후들만 아는 사실인줄 알았더니.. 상식들 대단하신듯
총칼로 조지나 성병으로 조지나
전쟁은 전쟁
대단한네요 ㅠ
골때리지만 세상은 바뀌지 않았네요 ㅠ
생화학 병기네요.
참 별짓을 다하네" 공산국가 인구 자원 많으니 필요하면 뭐든 할 수 있으니 대단해"
뭐 돈 되는 곳에 투자 ? 방치 또는 독려하고, 성인 용품 수출 많이하고 리얼돌, 성 엑스포도 하고, 이런 문화는 한국 보다 열려 있어
ㅋㅋ
짱개들은 진짜 하..... 우리나라에도 300만명정도 산다는데 이거 어떻게 해야 할까여
전라도 새기들이 밀어주는 민주당 이새기들이 중국돈 쳐먹나 진짜 짱개들 유입시켜줘 대학교 석사 받으면 영주권 준다고 하질 않나
진짜 이 짱개들 때문에 나중엔 장깨 국회위원 대통령까지 짱개로 도배될수도 있겠네요
저런적없어요...
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