To mark ten years after MH17, in which the ‘diplomatic’ activist and beloved Amsterdammer Pim de Kuijer died, the Pim de Kuijer lecture has invited GNP+ Community Networks and Partnerships Manager, Alexandra ‘Sasha’ Volgina to give the anniversary lecture.
Saint Petersburg-born Sasha, like many other Russian young people at the time, used heroin in the late 1990s and therefore contracts HIV in the year 2000. In a country where HIV prefers to be silenced, she begins her fight for recognition of HIV- fellow sufferers and for fellow sufferers within the LGBTI+ community. She is co-founder of activist movements such as FrontAIDS: the first movement for HIV treatment in Russia and Svecha: a groundbreaking organization from the HIV/AIDS community that advocates access to medicines.
Her efforts earn her the MTV Russia Award ‘Live’ in 2005 in recognition of her fight against HIV/AIDS. Later follows the creation of E.V.A. – Russia’s first full women’s network – and the action group ‘Patients in Control’, which won the Red Ribbon Award in 2011 for its plea against stock shortages of AIDS inhibitors. Her journey and her activism are recorded in the documentary ‘Sinners Disease’, in which her fervent urge for change has been brought to the attention.
However, her activism leads to political persecution in Russia and is the reason for her to move to Kyiv, Ukraine in 2013, where she continues her work for HIV-positive individuals. Like Pim de Kuijer, she would participate in the international AIDS conference in Australia, but misses her flight in 2014 and therefore narrowly escapes the fateful MH17 flight. Sasha now lives in Amsterdam and works for GNP+, an international organization that fights against HIV-related stigma and discrimination.
Watch Sasha’s full lecture here:
Source: deBALIE
