Rede beim Empfang von UNAIDS zur Berlinale 2016 (14.2.2016)

I am very happy to be here with all of you today for this wonderful

occasion.

When Holger from Deutsche Aidshilfe asked me to join today for the presentation of a worldwide HIV-test-campaign my first thought was „Well, you’re almost six years too

late for me“.

My own test result felt like time traveling, but not in a good way. It threw me

back into the eighties and I saw all those horrible pictures of AIDS as we

knew it then. In one second I felt like I was going to die. Of course I knew that

that was not about to happen, but still I felt that way. At least for a brief

moment.

Now, nearly six years later, those time-travels still happen. Not just with me,

but with people I meet, or talk to. They don’t know what has happened since

1996, they don’t know what „undetectable viral load“ means. And to me that

seems like they live in an other time. And that happens to all of us HIVpositive

or HIV-negative.

Why is that? How can a virus, that still is able to kill us, that EVERYONE

can get, is such a tabu?

Sometimes my time-traveling-journeys make me very sad. That’s when I

have to hear „You’re gay. You knew that would happen to you.“ It’s so

easy to think „here is „us“ and there are „them“. „I’m good“ and they’re..

well… not good. And „they“ are „not good“ because „they“ did something

„wrong“. That can be sex (what I loooove), it can be drugs, or whatever.

They divide us into black and white, good and wrong, healthy and sick. And I

find this to be sick. This stigmatization has to come to an end. If we want to

fight AIDS, we have to fight stigmatization of people with HIV, of gays,

lesbians, drug users, sexworkers, well everybody who does not live a

„normal“ life. All of us are confronted with stigmatization, exclusion and

violence.

It’s fear that keeps us from going to an HIV-test. Fear to be / or become „one

of them“. We don’t want to be excluded, kept apart. And that’s the ankle!

That’s exactly what I love about that campaign: ProTest HIV. It’s a pro, but it’s

a protest, too!

Wherever one is forced to be different, not him or herself, one can not

flourish and there grows fear. And fear is never a good advisor.

For a society with #ZERODISCRIMINATION we have to fight fear to end

stigmatization. And we do that with education, with respect and with

acceptance of all individual livestyles. Only an educated, respectful and

accepting society, in which people with HIV and AIDS are included, can

face the challenges of HIV and AIDS successfully.

For all those reasons I am very happy and proud to be here with you. We

will fight the Stigma, we will promote HIV-testing and so we will end AIDS

at 2030.

Thank you all for your work! Together we’re strong!