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AIDS in Asia
The AIDS situation is becoming worse in many of Asia's poorer countries.
Presently, in India, for instance, 3.7 million are infected, more than in any other country except South Africa. In China, an estimated 500,000 people, mainly drug users, live with HIV/AIDS.
Gordon Alexander, senior country program adviser for UNAIDS in India,states, "We've got a serious epidemic in Asia or at least in South Asia."
In Thailand, where a thriving sex industry has contributed significantly to the spread of the virus, about one million of the country's 60 million people are HIV infected.
In many countries like India, China and Singapore, the battle against HIV is a social and cultural one against the social stigma attached to the disease.
Last year, China launched a nationwide media campaign to curb the spread of HIV.
The country has also launched pilot projects, among them a drive to place condom vending machines in bars, karaoke halls and universities, but these have been stymied by conservative officials who believe the problem is largely a foreign one. Similarly in the Philippines, though under different reasoning, the Catholic Church has opposed campaigns promoting condom use.
In Singapore, the actual number of cases may be eight times higher than official number of 3,000 foreigners and 1,200 Singaporese. "Stigmatization and denial is still very, very common so people are afraid to get tested and many times won't even tell their families if they test positive," said BrentonWong of Action For Aids.
Thailand is the one success story in Asia where a government-sponsored condom promotion campaign and a drive to change sexual behavior have helped control the spread of HIV.
As the AIDS virus spreads across Asia, however, a UNAIDS report warns: "It may be just a matter of time before infections reach a critical level...certainly there is no room for complacency."
Underground Catholic Church Harrassed
Chinese police have detained a priest and 23 other Roman Catholics, severely beating the pastor, in southern Fujian Province. It is part of a government campaign to force believers to leave the underground Catholic church, a lobbying group, Cardinal Kung Foundation, said.
Rev. Liu Shaozhang was beaten and kept in custody with the other Catholic believers. Two were released.
Fujian province has an active and growing Catholic community and has come under renewed government pressure. Police in a nearby township detained another underground priest, the Rev. Gao Yihua, on Aug. 19 for celebrating Mass in a private home and held him for 11 days.
Church Bombings
In June and July, there was a string of church bombings in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Goa and Andhra Pradesh.
On July 8 a bomb exploded in St. Peters Lutheran Church in the city of Hubli, 250 miles north of Bangalore as Christians observed a national day of solidarity called by the All India Christian Council in Chennai to protest communal and fascist forces.
The blast occurred on a veranda leading to the prayer hall of the St. Peters Lutheran Church, damaging a wall and a steel gate. There were no casualties.
Christian leaders in the Karnataka capital Bangalore expressed shock over the explosion and asked the central and state governments to protect Christians.
An inter-church committee in Andhra Pradesh has also urged President K.R. Narayanan to ensure that Christians and their property are protected.
According to the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, there had been 36 recorded anti-Christian attacks between January and June this year.
A week after the July 8 bombings, on a Sunday night, another explosion shattered windows in a church in Bangalore, shortly after hundreds of people had attended an annual feast.
The blast caused no injuries but left a small crater in the floor in a church in Bangalore, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the blast.
In the first part of August, a church leader, Reverend G. Emanuel, was stabbed to death by unidentified assailants in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.
Sixty-three-year-old Reverend Emanuel, of the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church, was killed as he was coming out of his office in Guntur town, 220 miles southeast of Hyderabad.
Military and Police Fight on Moluccas Islands
President Abdurrahman Wahid said on June 23 that "outsiders" should not be allowed to travel to the province. The Far Eastern Economic Review reported the military, mainly Islam believers and local policemen, Christian believers at Moluccas islands, may have made the delicate situation more complicated.
On June 18, at least 114 people were killed when a group of Muslims attacked a village in Halmahera and burned down a church where hundreds of refugees were sheltering.
In July Church leaders in Maluku islands urged the international community to help evacuate thousands of Christians from the archipelago due to a sharp upsurge in attacks by Muslim paramilitaries.
Jos Tethool, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop in Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, said the army "seems unable" to stop attacks on Muslim by Laskar Jihad--an armed Muslim militia whose leaders have vowed to cleanse the islands of Christians. The group, which sent 3,000 members into the region earlier this year, has been blamed for much of the recent carnage.
Indonesia's military admitted that some of its troops have taken sides in the long-running Christian-Muslim war in the Maluku islands.
Two days after television footage showed Indonesian troops fighting alongside Muslim militants, armed forces spokesman Rear Air Marshall Graito Usodo said some soldiers have become emotionally involved in the religious war.
The announcement came as a boatload of 1,500 Maluku refugees, mostly Christians, arrived in West Timor.
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