AIDS class for China sex workers angers police

BEIJING, Oct 16 (Reuters) An AIDS prevention lecture aimed at Chinese sex workers who were given free condoms has sparked a strong rebuke from police, a newspaper said today.

The Centre for Disease Control in northeastern Harbin held the lecture last week, calling the group of more than 50 sex workers ''sisters'' and telling them to call if they need help, the Beijing News said.

Local police said the lecture was ''unacceptable'', the newspaper said.

''The usually underground prostitutes labelled their profession on their foreheads this time. Being unable to crack down, the police were really upset,'' it said.

An estimated 650,000 people are living with HIV-AIDS in China, and health experts say the disease is moving into the general population with most new infections now spread sexually, although drug-users follow closely behind.

China has stepped up the fight against HIV-AIDS in recent years after initially being slow to acknowledge its threat, but public ignorance and fear remain strong and HIV carriers still live with stigma and discrimination.

Police have even used the presence of condoms in sex workers' handbags as a justification for detention.

''Education can be carried out in various forms,'' the Beijing News quoted an unnamed Harbin police officer as saying. ''But it is hard for us to accept this kind of public lecture.'' Prostitution was wiped out after the Communist revolution in 1949 but has flourished across the country since market reforms started in the early 1980s.

REUTERS AKJ RAI0905