NEWS opnewseditor@gmail.com December ist Marks World AIDS Day Nicole Burton, News Editor Douglas College, the Douglas Students talked with students about the issues. along with contraceptives and lubricants much to the appreciation of students. our small world. The BC Centre for Disease Control reminder that AIDS is everyone’s issue. tracting the HIV virus, with the highest increase being with middle-aged men Last Thursday was World AIDS Day and at between the ages of 34 and 55. Despite this Union Pride Collective set up tables in the still remains in the younger population. The main foyer on the New West Campus and demographic still most likely to contract Organizers passed out information on AIDS _ between the ages of 19 and 34. Around campus, faculty and students wore red ribbons as a tribute to those who ness about AIDS and HIV. have died from AIDS. The problem itself, While the awareness may be spreading, however, seems to be infinitely greater than the problem of AIDS is definitely growing. released a report stating that AIDS in the province is on the rise. The report, just in time for World AIDS Day, makes it a timely eased the blow, with the development of According to statistics gathered, an increas- to live longer. ing number of British Columbians are con- For more information, please check out jump in numbers, the greatest at-risk group HIV in BC is heterosexual women of colou On Thursday, December 1, people all over the world held events and celebrations for World AIDS Day, working to raise awar Around the world, more than 40 million people are HIV-positive, and more than 25 million people have died from AIDS in the last 25 years. Technology has in some ways new treatments that now allow AIDS victim The BC Centre for Disease Control: www.becdc.org The Number of Detainees in “War on Terror” Nicole Burton, News Editor As of November 2005, the United States has detained more than 83,000 people in the four years since September 11, 2001. That’s enough to completely fill both GM Place and BC Place with lineups out the doors. According to human rights groups both in and out of the US, the numbers should be higher. They don’t include the thousands of US citizens who themselves have been detained without evi- dence under the guise of “national security.” In 2001-2002 alone, there were a reported 1500 “missing persons” in the United States, illegally taken in for questioning and interrogation by US Intelligence. The vast majority of these detainees were young men between the ages of 20 and 35, either from Arab or South Asian descent. From Iraq, to Afghanistan, to the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, detainees in the “War on Terror” have gained a bitterly grim spotlight in the media, thanks to prison scandals across the world documenting human rights viola- tions ranging from abuse, torture, sexual assault, and homicide. The most well known of these has become the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq, that led to the release of literally thousands of photographs and hours. of video footage docu menting the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. ! a The US Administration has defended the practice of holding detainees in its prisons, main- taining that the prisons are critical in killing the insurgencies in occupied territories, including Iraq and Afghanistan. International law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment. Spokespeople o1 behalf of the Pentagon and the US Department of Defense have argued that their tactics have been “consistent with the law,” and that deviatio into the use of torture or practices that have resulted in deaths remain with a few bad apples a the bottom of the barrel. This argument contin- ues despite numerous accounts from privates co victed of conducting abuse and torture, who hav4 consistently stated that their “orders came from above.” R®ughly 14,500 detainees remain in US cus- tody today, primarily in Iraq. Other countries that are allied with the US in the War on Terror, including Canada, have followed similar practices of detainment without evidence. In Ontario, ther are currently five Muslim men being held on “security certificates,” which are pieces of legisla- tion that legalize detainment without evidence fo] reasons of “national security.” ‘The five men have collectively been in prison without evidence for nearly 1,000 months.