HIV-positive man fights in court for job
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On Friday, a Yanbian county court in Southwest China's Sichuan province will hear China's second case involving charges of employment discrimination against an HIV carrier.
Xu Xinhua, who is representing the petitioner Xiao Jun (an alias), said he is confident his client can win, even though the first such case brought before judges ended in failure during a single hearing.
Xiao Jun, a 28-year-old Yanbian resident who aspires to be a teacher, tested positive for HIV during a mandatory medical examination, which he had to undergo before taking a post at a government-run school.
After seeing the test results, the county education bureau declined to offer him the job. As bad as that was, an even worse blow came for Xiao Jun when he learned that the news of his contraction of HIV had begun to spread around the education bureau.
Xiao Jun took the case to court on Oct 20, demanding the job he was promised. He also asked the county education bureau to apologize for allowing its knowledge of his medical condition to leak.
The Yanbian county court accepted the case in one week but did not follow the common practice of scheduling a hearing for a date within the next three months.
"The delay came about because the county education bureau has tried to give Xiao Jun a certain amount of money so that he will withdraw the case. But it won't offer him the job," Xu said, without disclosing the amount offered.
Xiao Jun said that he would not accept the money. "I just want a job to support my parents, since I am an only child," he told China Daily.
"I would even accept a non-teaching job in the school from the education bureau."
"We are confident about winning this case," Xu, whose practice is based in Kunming, Yunnan province, told China Daily in a telephone interview. He said China's AIDS Prevention and Treatment Regulation stipulates that HIV carriers and AIDS patients have the right to be married, employed, treated for medical conditions and enrolled in schools.
But a staff member of the bureau, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Xiao Jun has no chance of obtaining a job in China, largely because the general public is afraid to put their children in a classroom supervised by an HIV-positive teacher.
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