On a frigid afternoon last week, an AIDS-ravaged Thai woman named A-chian (
"Gotta go to work and make as much money as you can," she said in surprisingly fluent Taiwanese. Soon her lanky figure dissolved down the street in Gongguan, Taipei City.
A-chian's words are timely, given that she doesn't know how long she will keep her modest job before the disease catches up with her, or her employers find out she is HIV-positive and fire her.
"I know no one likes me, no matter how long I live here," she said. For her, the lack of acceptance is not so much because of her nationality as because of her HIV status.
A-chian's life in Taiwan is a sad footnote to a common immigrant story. As one of the estimated 300,000 foreign brides who have married Taiwanese husbands in search of a better life on foreign soil, A-chian flew from Bangkok 19 years ago to marry a man she had never met.
A few years later, she returned to Thailand to seek shelter after she gave birth to two children and ran away from her alcoholic husband. During that homecoming, she contracted HIV from her boyfriend. After his death, she came back to Taiwan and worked to raise her 3-year-old daughter in Thailand.
Rejected by her family and bereft of support, A-chian finally took refuge in a halfway home for people living with AIDS.
A-chian's case is not uncommon.
"A-chian is not the only foreign female patient we have taken in," said Nicole Yang (
Currently, Taiwan's Center for Disease Control registered 492 HIV-infected foreigners living in Taiwan. 66 of them are foreign brides. 66 of them were deported back to their mother countries, and 66 families were thus shattered.
Helping immigrants like A-chian is a challenge facing Ivory Lin (
"The biggest problem is that while our country enshrines the value of human rights, we are actually deporting HIV positive immigrants once they are identified," Lin said.
Although health officials proposed to revise the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Control Act (
Compared to HIV-positive foreigners who have been deported, A-chian is lucky. Her 19-year-marriage has granted her Taiwan citizenship, which entitles her to cocktail drug therapy that is fully covered by national health insurance. A-chian only has to take her health insurance card with her to the hospital's pharmacist and she gets a free drug bag every month.
"There are few counties like Taiwan who spend NT$1 billion to offer free drugs to people with HIV," said Shih Wen-yi (
But foreign spouses still have to cope with other formidable problems facing every HIV patient in Taiwan. The most pressing problem is the denial of their right to work.
Because the AIDS Control Act does not ensure the right to work and doesn't stipulate any penalty for those who refuse to hire HIV-positive people, work discrimination has become a common practice here. Some state-run enterprises and government agencies require mandatory HIV blood tests which they justify as "precautionary measures."
Ivory Lin cited as examples of discrimination a Taipei police officer discharged in 2001, a health worker laid off in 2002, and an MRT driver who gave up his job under pressure.
Cases such as those highlight the need for government action to help protect the rights of those infected with AIDS, experts said.
"The government can redress the stigma that comes with AIDS," said Arthur Chen (陳宜民), the director of AIDS prevention and research center at the National Yang Ming University. "The government could introduce an anti-discrimination law."
A-chian's modest hope is to earn enough money to support herself. She waits on customers who come to enjoy a bowl of beef noodles, helps weaker patients in the halfway home, and sometimes allows herself the luxury of buying earrings in Gongguan night market. She lives quietly in Taipei City, quietly among us.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS