Contact: Paul Davis-on site: 1-202-257-9569
Katie Krauss-on site: 1-202-421-4777
SharonAnn Lynch: 1-212-674-9598

WASHINGTON- Activists were arrested for disrupting the vote by chanting "AFRICA IS NOT FOR SALE. AIDS DRUGS NOW." Police removed the activists after the six activists from HIV/AIDS and student communities chained themselves to House Gallery chairs and held a banner that read "AFRICA IS NOT FOR SALE."

The student activists from Delaware and members of Act Up Philadelphia, already critical of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), were protesting the elimination of the provisions on access to HIV/AIDS medications and the erosion of development and child labor provisions of the bill.

"At the behest of the pharmaceutical lobby, Senator Lott and House Speaker Hastert stripped Senate language from the bill that would have increase availability of affordable generic versions of expensive patented AIDS medications for Africa," said Paul Davis from ACT UP Philadelphia. "What's worse, Congressional leadership is acting with callous indifference to hundreds of thousands of people with AIDS in the Caribbean by reversing the Clinton Administration's promise to leave internal decisions about access to HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals up to individual countries without meddling in their domestic affairs at the WTO."

Today's action at House of Representatives Gallery follows recent reports of changes being made in the trade legislation by the House and Senate Conferees. The widely supported Senate Feinstein-Feingold HIV/AIDS amendment, which prohibited spending U.S. government money to challenge WTO-legal policies on access to HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals, was completely eliminated by Hastert and Lott. Additionally, the converse of the Feinstein-Feingold amendment was added to the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) provisions violating U.S. government has explicitly allowed challenge of the pharmaceutical access rules that are legal under the WTO TRIPs agreement that covers intellectual property.]]

"Today's action highlights not only the threats AGOA-CBI poses to millions of people across the world but the low level of discourse among our elected officials," said SharonAnn Lynch of ACT UP New York. "What public policy goal is advanced here? Should we protecting those suffering from HIV/AIDS or shielding the pharmaceutical giants from ever reducing their enormous profit margins?"

Earlier this year, ACT UP challenged the Clinton administration's attempt to gut a South African law that utilized WTO-legal policies to provide affordable, generic versions of patented HIV/AIDS medication to those that need it. In a high profile campaign, ACT UP followed Vice President Al Gore from the beginning of his campaign in Carthage, Tennessee demanding that Gore reverse his policy and encourage, rather than punish, poor countries seeking to provide life-saving medicine. Gore had been negotiating pharmaceutical company-backed erosion of South Africa policy. The ACT UP campaign ambushed Vice President Gore for the first few months of his presidential bid, including a several thousand-person demonstration at a fundraising event in Philadelphia.

After the Vice President directed the IS Trade Representative to cease actions against South Africa on September 17, 1999, ACT UP campaigned to extend the trade agreement to all other poor countries. Activists took over USTR Barshefsky's office in D.C. demanding a extension of the trade agreement. At President Clinton's World AIDS Day address in Seattle on Dec. 1, it was announced that the U.S. would no longer use its economic clout to interfere with other countries' WTO compliant measures taken to increase access to medicine. This announcement was strengthened by Vice President Gore's address to the United Nations Security Council on Jan.11.

Today the activists are angered by the inclusion of the CBI provision exceeding WTO trade agreements on intellectual property, coupled with the exclusion of the HIV/IDS medicine amendment and the unilateral imposition of structural adjustment conditions.

"This bill will literally result in more AIDS for Africa and the Caribbean," said ACT UP's Brian Spina. "AGOA sidesteps the middle institution of the IMF, by unilaterally forcing poor countries to adopt economic policies that have proven time after time to rapidly decrease life expectancy," he said.

Student activists from Delaware, the home state of Senator Roth the Senate sponsor and chief proponent of AGOA-CBI, joined the ACT UP demonstrators.

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