Population, Gender, and Disparity - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 81

Figure 3-8
This arranged marriage took place in a Dayak
longhouse in Indonesian Borneo (Kamantan).
Thirty families and a three-legged dog lived in the
longhouse. The longhouse, with its multiple rooms,
had no modern facilities except for a very small TV
that ran on a car battery . Bride price negotiations,
which lasted five hours, were conducted between the
respective fathers as the groom' s mother shouted
instructions to her husband from the background.
The bride (age 15), who appeared to be terrified,
and the groom (age 17) who seemed to be pleased,
sat rigidly throughout the whole affair . The actual
ceremony , conducted by a shaman, finally took
place at 3:00 a.m. Photograph courtesy of
B. A. Weightman.

rested again by the North Korean authorities and sen-
tenced to years of hard labor in notoriously harsh pe-
nal colonies. If they have a Chinese-fathered baby , it is
executed. If the girl is pregnant, she is forced to abort
and the baby is killed.

and cities in the country , 4,000 centers are merely a
drop in the bucket. And, in Indian society , having
AIDS is a stigma. Consequently , many people avoid
testing.
There are 70,000 AIDS sufferers in Nepal. Seasonal
migrant workers make up 41 percent and partners and
wives of HIV infected men make up 21 percent. As is the
case in all of Asia, sizeable numbers of men work away
from home, many of them as truck drivers. These men
are called “bridge populations” because while away from
home, they contract AIDS from prostitutes and upon re-
turning home, they infect their wives.
AIDS infection remains a serious problem in
Southeast Asia. In fact, infection rates have risen in
Vietnam and Indonesia. However, some progress has
been made in battling the disease in Thailand, Myan-
mar, and Cambodia. Thailand, for example, began
combating AIDS in the early 1990s. One of its successes
is its 100% Condom Program, which mandates condom
use in all brothels.
The Philippines has low rates of AIDS occurrence.
The government began to screen and treat infected
prostitutes in the early 1990s. However, there is evi-
dence of complacency regarding the disease among
Filipino youth.
Mother to child transmission is a very serious prob-
lem in Asia. Most mothers get AIDS from their husbands,
who have contracted it from prostitutes or from homo-
sexual encounters. Since homosexuality is scorned in
most Asian cultures, many gay men get married and have
children and their sexual encounters are clandestine. It

AIDS AND PROSTITUTION
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there
were 30-36 million people with HIV -AIDS worldwide as of
2007. In that same year, an additional 2.5 individuals be-
came infected. The major causes are unprotected sex and
drug use, both of which are on the rise.
In Asia, there are an estimated 5 million victims in-
cluding the 380,000 that were added in 2007. The high-
est rates of infection are in South and Southeast Asia
where, according to UNAIDS (United Nations), sex
workers make up an estimated 50 percent of the cases.
According to WHO and United Nations AIDS
(UNAID), the rate of infection has reached epidemic
proportions in India, which has at least 2.5 million
cases of AIDS. Women comprise nearly 40 percent of
the victims. A recent study of prostitutes in Mysore
revealed that one-quarter of the women were infected.
Other investigations reveal that 42 percent of sex
workers believe that they can tell if a man had AIDS by
his appearance.
The Indian government has been building AIDS
testing centers and there are now about 4,000 of these
across the nation. However, when you consider that
there are more than 600,000 villages, let alone towns