Downer defends aid to Burma to figh

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Downer defends aid to Burma to fight HIV
Date: 29/07/98


By LINDSAY MURDOCH, Herald Correspondent in Manila

Australia has boosted its aid to Burma as part of a $5 million program to
help combat HIV in areas of South-East Asia where the disease is rampant.

Dismissing concerns that Australian aid money will be sent into a country
ruled by a brutal dictatorship, the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said the
problem of HIV crossed borders. "I am just not prepared to let people die,"
he said.

Mr Downer, in Manila for annual talks with ASEAN, announced that the $5
million over three years would be channelled through local non-government
and community organisations in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China's Yunnan
Province, Laos and Burma.

But the co-ordinator of the Australia-Burma Council, Ms Amanda Zappia, said
Burmese activists believed it was wrong for Australian money to be sent into
Burma unless it was sanctioned by Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (NLD).

"We are as concerned as the NLD that any aid money going to local
non-government organisations will end up in the pocket of the corrupt regime
and not necessarily reach the intended targets," Ms Zappia said.

Mr Downer said fast-moving epidemics in Cambodia and Burma were intensifying
the spread of HIV across the region, leading to increasing social and
economic costs for families and governments.

Officials from the Australian aid agency AusAid say they suspect the HIV
problem is worse in Burma than any other Asian country but its military
rulers deny the existence of the disease and have refused to back major
programs to combat it.

China and Thailand are extremely worried about the spread of HIV through
infected people crossing the Burmese border into their countries. 

Mr Downer said that while Australia would not agree to aid funds being
channelled directly through the Burmese junta, "you just can't ignore the
problem" and had to recognise it crossed international borders. "For the
program to be effective it has to include Burma," he said.

In Cambodia one in 30 pregnant women and almost one in two sex workers was
infected, Mr Downer said.

Most Western countries have maintained a ban on aid to Burma following the
junta's refusal to recognise the results of 1990 elections which the NLD
reportedly won in a landslide.

For several years Australia has provided between $2 million and $3 million
for health education in Burma, with the money being spent mainly in refugee
communities in border areas.

Mr Downer also announced that Australia would provide $660,000 to help
tackle the smoke haze caused across South-East Asia by Indonesian forest fires.