RURAL Aids victims and HIV positive residents who declare their status in Mpumalanga are treated like sexual perverts and are in danger of being stoned to death, the provincial Youth Commission warned on Monday. Commission chief executive Paulos Mnisi and a panel of commissioners said the province was so conservative that not even they were prepared to openly declare whether they were HIV positive or not. The province’s health department had also repeatedly failed, Mnisi said, to assist the commission in its attempts to educate the youth and rural communities by refusing to share technical, organisational, financial and information resources. Mnisi said the commission had therefore advertised for HIV positive people to fill six new ‘Positive Ambassador’ posts within the commission to work in rural communities and change public perceptions by educating the youth on Aids and its causes.