The Vietnamese schoolgirl was at ease as she read her letter on the importance of raising awareness of HIV/AIDS to an attentive audience at the plenary session of the UPU’s Council of Administration. This was her first trip abroad, Hieu Hien said. She was “impressed with the Bernese Alps, the arcades of the Bern’s old town that hide many small shops and the city’s red trams that never stop”. She added she would remember her visit forever and maybe return one day to make a film. Her plans for the future include studying to learn how to write scripts and make films about people’s lives.
Her winning composition was a letter addressed to Zhang Yimou, China’s well-known film director, which struck a chord with the international jury. It is the first time Viet Nam has won the competition after participating for 20 years. Some 1.3 million Vietnamese schoolchildren write letters for the competition each year. Around two million children participate worldwide.
At the ceremony, Hedia Belhadj, director of partnerships at UNAIDS, congratulated the UPU for using the competition to raise awareness among young people of the importance of HIV prevention. Out of the 33 million people living with HIV, five million are young people aged 15 to 24 years. An estimated 2,500 young people become newly infected with HIV every day. “Young people have to lead the way on prevention,” she said before urging more countries to participate in the HIV prevention campaign launched last year by the UPU, UNAIDS, the International Labour Organization and UNI Global Union. “Through the vast postal network, we
can bring information about this disease to populations that are often not accessible by other means,” Belhadj added.
Danang, 20 November 2009
Dear Uncle Zhang Yimou,
Sometimes I worry as I don’t know if you’d be bothered to open a letter from Ho Thi Hieu Hien in Viet Nam. I had the idea of writing to you only after hearing at school about the 39th UPU International Letter-writing Competition for Young People and its theme of the fight against AIDS.
To find out more about the subject for my composition, I spoke to several people to see how they understand AIDS and protect themselves. To begin with, I asked my grandmother. She told me: “At my age, I have no idea what this “ed” virus is. I heard that it lives in people of loose morals. Do not get near them or you will catch it.” Can you imagine? My poor grandmother knows nothing about AIDS.
When I a sked them, my parents said: “AIDS stands for ‘acquired immune deficiency syndrome’ and is caused by the HIV virus. This disease is very dangerous and there is no medicine yet to cure it. Whatever you do, don’t take drugs or have unprotected sex if you want to be safe.” My mother even said to me: “If ever there is someone with AIDS in your class, you must tell us right away so that we can move you to another class or school.” So, you see, even my parents, who are civil servants, are prejudiced against AIDS sufferers. I a sked my little sister, who told me that without a doubt there was nobody in her class with
AIDS and if there was she would wear a mask to school or stay at home for good! It’s really funny –my sister thinks that AIDS is like avian flu!
On the way home from school, I put the same question to a state sanitation employee. She showed me a pile of empty syringes by the road side and said: “HIV is in those syringes!” So, you see, the road sweeper is also badly informed. Then, I went into a restaurant and spoke to the owner. “AIDS?” he said. “If you see someone, who is very thin, can hardly stand up and has spots all over his body, then you can be sure he has AIDS! But don’t worry, I never let them into this place because I am afraid they will give the disease to my customers!” I feel sorry for the poor people, who look like that but do not have the virus! The
restaurant owner does not know that HIV cannot be caught from food or by talking to someone with the virus and that we live our lives alongside AIDS.
At school, I talked to my friends, but many of them didn’t seem to care and said that fighting AIDS is a matter for doctors and hospitals, and, since thankfully nobody in our class has it, we don’t have anything to worry about. This indifference among friends of my age might explain why a thousand children aged 14 or less are infected every day.
I wanted to sit down and write a letter calling on everyone to find out more about AIDS and change the way they think about it so they can join the fight and prevent it. I thought about it for some days but still had no idea how or where to begin. So I put my writing paper to one side and went to watch TV. They were showing your film, Curse of the Golden Flower. What a beautiful film!
Suddenly, it occured to me: what if I had a talent for film-making like you? I would start making films about AIDS straight away to raise awareness. My first film would be a moving love story. It would be romantic and tragic –the main characters would fall madly in love but could not get married because one of them ha s AIDS. This film would be called To Die and would be as highly regarded as your To Live. The message would be: they do not want to die young but Death lurks in every risk they take, such as having unsafe sex or sharing needles.
Most of my films would be inspired by real life and the heroes would be AIDS victims. There would be a civil servant, who has worked all his life and maintained his dignity but has lost everything in a moment of uncontrolled pleasure; a medical employee, who contracted the virus through negligence, someone who has worked hard all his life to build a family and a home but dies alone, abandoned by his loved ones; young people full of life, who die because they take drugs; wide-eyed children whose parents die from AIDS or do not know that they are about to be taken away by Death; young girls, who know they have AIDS in their bodies and want to sow death among others to have their revenge…
Different people with different fates: in my films I would convey love and pain, ingratitude and ignorance, while imparting knowledge about AIDS prevention in a gentle yet forceful way in order to awaken human conscience. I hope with all my heart that you will read my letter and understand.
Yours sincerely,
Ho Thi Hieu Hien
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