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Deputies of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial People's Congress have moved to scrap a regional rule that requires drug addicts to receive compulsory HIV tests.
Analysts said the move was a step forward in human rights protection.
The proposal was part of a campaign to remove or revise 14 coercive regional rules that have no legal basis, the Qianjiang Evening News reported on Wednesday.
According to the Administrative Coercion Law set to be effective next year, all coercive regulations need to have a legal basis, otherwise they must be either revoked or revised.
After reviewing 172 regional rules, the provincial standing committee found 14 without legal basis, including one mandating HIV tests, the newspaper quoted Lü Hanfu, a deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Committee, as saying.
Based on Zhejiang's current regulations on HIV/AIDS prevention, law enforcement officers need to notify local disease control centers after arresting drug addicts and work with them on getting the detainees to take compulsory HIV tests.
However, such tests have no legal basis, the newspaper said.
"The removal of the rule would mark major progress in protecting the human rights and privacy of drug addicts," Li Dan with Dongzhen, an HIV/AIDS prevention NGO, told the Global Times, adding that many countries do not have such compulsory tests.
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