Human Rights Watch highlights the tragic irony of Thailand's hosting of the International AIDS Conference: Thailand’s brutal anti-drug crackdown is jeopardizing its human rights record and its success against HIV/AIDS, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released ahead of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok from July 11-16. A government anti-drug campaign resulting in as many as 3,000 killings has driven drug users underground and away from lifesaving HIV prevention services...“It’s a scandal that Thailand is hosting the International AIDS Conference while it persecutes people at high risk of HIV,” said Jonathan Cohen, researcher with Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS Program and one of the report’s authors. “There are proven methods of addressing drug addiction and HIV/AIDS, and murder is not one of them.” Although drug dealers are the stated targets of the war on drugs, drug users not charged with dealing have been persecuted and driven into hiding, which prevents them from reaching needle-exchange programs and other HIV-prevention services. Many injection-drug users face the risk of HIV infection from the sharing of blood-contaminated syringes. In the past, health experts have praised Thailand’s leadership against AIDS since the country’s successful “100 percent condom” campaign in the 1990s. That program prevented an estimated 200,000 HIV infections by providing condoms and HIV/AIDS information in brothels and health clinics. But the war on drugs has reversed many of those gains...On December 1, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared “victory” in the war on drugs. In addition to almost 3,000 unexplained deaths, thousands had been forced into drug treatment in military-style boot camps. Surveys showed that many who enrolled in drug treatment were not even drug users, but people who feared arrest or murder if they did not participate in the program.