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By Víctor Hugo Robles

[READ ALSO: HIV/AIDS in Chile: Between the worst figures in the region and the media circus]

That's where a nightmare began, ending only with diplomatic intervention from UNAIDS, which finally led the Chilean Foreign Ministry to backtrack in a statement yesterday acknowledging a procedural "error." In the meantime, Jhaim lost the job offer.

“I feel insulted, discriminated against, humiliated, trampled on by the ignorance of people who are supposed to represent a country. I also feel lied to, since President Sebastián Piñera and Foreign Minister Roberto Ampuero have spoken ad nauseam about the horrible situation in my country and beat their chests claiming that Venezuelan migrants matter to them, but behind the scenes they close all the doors to migration,” he said angrily. “I demand a public apology for the flagrant violation of my human rights,” Jhaim told Presentes.

The path of Jhaim

Jhaim recounts that living with HIV in Venezuela today is "sadly a silent death sentence, to the point that all infectious disease specialists recommend that their patients emigrate to other countries, due to the shortage of treatments and a huge rate of opportunistic diseases such as tuberculosis, cytomegalovirus and meningitis."

In this context, emigrating from Venezuela to find medical solutions often becomes the only hope for survival. “We have sadly returned to the Venezuela of the 1980s, where patients who cannot emigrate travel with great effort to the border city of Cúcuta, Colombia, to seek ART and return to their cities, on journeys of up to 10 hours or more for one leg of the trip.”

Jhaim, like many other Venezuelan citizens, emigrated to other places to save their lives, with Chile being one of the countries that has received a significant Venezuelan community, particularly young professionals.

[READ ALSO: Indigenous leader denounces official over HIV policies in Chile]

“I first emigrated to Ecuador and then to Lima, Peru. I came to Lima because I heard about better job opportunities, but I ran into a huge wall of difficulty accessing the public healthcare system,” he recounts, adding that Santiago, Chile, then became a real possibility when he received a concrete job offer. “On November 20th of this year, I received a great job offer as a creative director at an advertising agency, an offer I couldn't pass up and that would change my life. But to get a contract and do everything legally, I had to formalize my immigration status, so I applied for a work visa at the Chilean consulate in Lima.”

“No person with AIDS can apply for a visa”

After receiving the tempting job offer, Jhaim looked at his suitcases and began requesting the formal requirements from the Chilean Consulate in Lima. After several calls, he was told that the process had to be completed online. “Upon reading the PDF files sent by the Chilean Consulate, I came across the alarming requirement for medical laboratory tests, including the ELISA test for HIV,” he recounts. “The situation completely alarmed me because I am living with HIV. I contacted the consulate again via email, expressing my fear and doubt about this requirement. The consulate's response was that, according to instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Santiago, Chile, no consulate can process visas if the applicant's medical test shows a positive result.”

UNAIDS' diplomatic intervention

On November 22, Jhaim Key met with Dr. Alberto Stella, UNAIDS representative for Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Stella contacted the consulate to request explanations from various officials, eventually speaking with the Chilean consul in Peru, Samuel Ossa Dietsch.

[READ ALSO: He is HIV-positive, won a lawsuit against the Chilean state and is requesting humanitarian asylum in Spain]

Interviewed by Presentes, Alberto Stella confirmed the reported situation and detailed what he described as a “tense” conversation with the Chilean diplomatic official. “I spoke with the Chilean consul in Lima, and what I can say is that there is either a lack of awareness of the regulations or an inappropriate application of them. That's the only interpretation I can offer because the Chilean government website—regarding visa processing at consular offices worldwide—clearly states in the visa application requirements that you must bring a medical certificate, which specifies in parentheses that you don't need to bring test results, including HIV test results. UNAIDS understands that Chile has no legal restrictions on the entry and/or stay of any citizen, regardless of nationality, based on their HIV status. They don't even inquire about it, they don't even ask for it.”

“The consul was somewhat taken aback, but ultimately they didn't offer this citizen a solution, and he also lost the job he had obtained in Chile,” he adds. “The consul insisted that this was the form they used and that it had to be submitted. I kept pointing out the contradiction, explaining that if the Chilean consulate and government required this, I, as a United Nations official, had to report it so that Chile would no longer appear on the list of countries that do not impose any kind of restrictions on the entry and stay of citizens with HIV, thus placing it alongside the countries that do have legal barriers.”

Stella was making direct reference to countries that prevent the entry of people living with HIV, such as Yemen, Oman, Sudan, Brunei, and the United Arab Emirates.

In Chile, it is illegal to require an HIV test for visa applications, job applications, or any other official procedure. Law 19.779 on the prevention, diagnosis, and control of HIV/AIDS establishes that testing is "voluntary and a person's right to choose whether or not to take the test." Furthermore, to protect people living with HIV, current regulations stipulate that there can be no discrimination in access to education, employment, and healthcare.

The letter to President Piñera

For their part, civil society organizations and activists working on HIV/AIDS delivered a letter yesterday morning to President Sebastián Piñera requesting a meeting and his "visible" intervention in the "failed public policies on HIV/AIDS," warning him of "the existence of immigration restrictions on visas to Chile for foreigners living with HIV/AIDS, a serious and regrettable fact that makes Chile the only country in Latin America that has this type of discriminatory measure."