Canada: MPs, activists rally against criminalisation outside Parliament; Edwin Cameron gives lecture tonight

Canadian MPs Libby Davies, Bill Siksay and Hedy Fry joined with activists, people living with HIV, and supporters on Ottawa's Parliament Hill on Wednesday, to protest Canada's criminalisation of people with HIV due to its discriminatory HIV disclosure laws. The rally was organised by the group Legalize AIDS.

Libby Davies (NDP), MP for Vancouver East, told the rally: "We're here today to take a very strong position that a criminalised approach to HIV/AIDS is not going to deal with the public health issues that we need to deal with. It's not going to deal with the issues of complex human behaviour that we need to deal with. It's not going to deal with issues of sexuality and how we approach our individual and collective and societal responsibilities."

Watch a 3 minute 16 second video of the rally, produced for Xtra.ca.



Tonight, Justice Edwin Cameron of South Africa's Constitutional Court, will speak in Toronto in a public lecture against the criminalisation of HIV exposure and transmission. For details, click here. He will also speak this weekend at The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network's 1st Annual Symposium on HIV, Law and Human Rights. For details, click here.

Justice Cameron recently addressed a criminalisation meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, which I attended. A report of the meeting will appear on my blog next week.