Fridae

Tun Suphakul's brother contracted HIV while serving time in prison. Tun's friends, other members of the Bangkok Gay Group, therefore, have begun efforts to stop the spread of HIV in Thailand's prison system. But they face an uphill battle.

The group put on a show at Bangkok's Remand Prison, according to the Bangkok Post, to demonstrate to inmates how to protect themselves from the virus, and the harm caused by unsafe sex with people who are already HIV-positive. The group plans to repeat the show at other correctional facilities and in public spaces.

However, their efforts have met with resistance from the prison system. While the prison houses some 7,000 men, prison officials identify only about 100 inmates as gay or transgendered (which, statistically speaking, appears to be a radical undercount), but, according to one member of the Bangkok Gay Group, many prisoners have sex with other men to relieve the stress of life behind bars. Only fifty men were allowed to see the show.

The play promotes the use of condoms, and the Group proposed distributing condoms at the prison to staunch the spread of AIDS, but prison officials nixed the idea. They announced it would encourage "abnormal behavior", Tun said. One wonders, of course, how much normal behavior is possible in Thailand's notoriously overcrowded and dehumanizing prisons.