BEIJING (Reuters) – A disease control office in Beijing has
opened the city’s first officially sanctioned online gay
chatroom, but most of the posts come from the Web site’s
managers, a newspaper reported on Monday.
A link marked “comrade forum” — “comrades” being Chinese
slang for gay men — on the Chaoyang District Disease
Prevention and Control Center’s Web site (www.cystd.com)
provides open threads for people to discuss their feelings and
seek counseling, the Beijing Times said.
Few people apart from the site’s managers have left posts
since the forum opened two months ago, in part due to people’s
concerns about restrictions, the paper quoted Fu Qingyuan, an
employee from the disease control center, as saying.
“Actually, such concerns are really unnecessary,” Fu said,
adding that apart from “people selling sex, obscene images and
other unsavory content,” posts would be largely untouched.
Fu, however, said health and disease prevention would be
the main focus of the forum, an “obvious distinction” to other
professional “comrade” Web sites set up by gay men.
“The purpose of the site is to let all gay people express
their true needs, to allow health workers to better communicate
with them and to prevent and control the possibility of AIDS
risks developing,” Fu said.
In China, homosexuality, while no longer officially
considered a mental disorder, is still an off limits subject
for many.
In a Beijing survey, only 15 percent of 482 men who had sex
with men understood that they were at risk of contracting HIV,
according to a 2005 report by the United Nations’ UNAIDS.
China estimates it has five to 10 million gay men and about
80 percent have admitted knowing nothing about the spread of
HIV/AIDS, state media have reported.
China reported 75,000 new HIV infections last year and
estimates it has 650,000 HIV/AIDS cases, but some experts say
the number may be higher.
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