Make intentional spread of AIDS a crime: lawmaker (Xinhua) Updated: 2006-03-12 09:51
A Chinese lawmaker has urged the inclusion of a new crime, "the intentional
spread of HIV/AIDS," into the country's Criminal Law, to better protect the
general public from the deadly epidemic.
"The new crime will be
applicable to those HIV carriers or AIDS patients who deliberately spread the
virus and disease by means of biting, scratching and injecting others or through
the channels like sexual intercourse, syringe sharing, blood transfusion and
organ transplant," said Li Yaping, a deputy to the Tenth National People's
Congress (NPC), the Chinese legislature in its annual full session in
Beijing. " Li suggested that once convicted, the offenders of the new
crime should be sentenced to at least 10 years in prison, and up to life
imprisonment and death sentence.
Li, who is from East China's Jiangxi
Province, said in recent years, there have been an increasing number of cases in
which police officers were bitten or scratched by criminal suspects infected
with HIV/AIDS.
There were also media reports about sex workers infected
with HIV/AIDS having unprotected sex with men, and about society-hating HIV/AIDS
carriers injecting passers-by with HIV-tainted syringe, she added.
"The
risk of being infected with HIV/AIDS is expanding rapidly from a few
professional circles, like the doctors and nurses, to everyone in the society,"
she claimed.
Meanwhile, the only article in the existing Criminal Law of
China that can be applied for such cases is Article 360, which stipulates that
"those who have a clear knowledge of their own serious STDs
(sexually-transmitted diseases), such as syphilis and gonorrhea, but still
engage themselves in the selling and buying of sex, should be subject to a
sentence of less than five years in prison or confinement, and be fined
concurrently."
"Since the intentional spread of HIV/AIDS could lead to
the death of the crime victims, the existing penalties for such offenses are
obviously too mild to have a deterring effect," she
said.
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