AMSTERDAM -- The 2020 International AIDS Conference (IAC) in San Francisco and Oakland is still 2 years away, but protests around it have already erupted, with activists objecting to U.S. government policies as discriminatory.

Citing "danger for potential participants and human rights violations in the U.S. under the Trump administration," the group HIVPowerShift marched through the halls of the convention center and even took to the streets here at the IAC's 2018 edition to protest the meeting's next host city.

Linda-Gail Bekker, MBChB, PhD, president of the International AIDS Society, the IAC's organizer, addressed the issue during this meeting's opening press conference. The choice of venue was made in a "democratically motivated way," she said. "We are obviously not oblivious to the community's thoughts about this [but] we have never shied away from controversy in terms of political machinations."

HIVPowerShift's website describes the organization as "an alliance of members of networks in the United States of people living with HIV and those among key populations targeted, detained, deported, and tortured by the Trump regime."

"From fear-based visa policies and immigration raids to direct attacks on the safety of sex workers, from transphobia to the resurgence of white supremacy -- the United States of America is anything but united," Cecilia Chung, of Transgender Law Center, an Oakland-based advocacy group, said in a statement. "Hosting AIDS 2020 in California ... goes against the International AIDS Society's own values of being inclusive, human-rights focused, and evidence-based."

San Francisco is no stranger to IAC meeting controversy. The meeting was held in 1990 in San Francisco, 3 years after the U.S. passed a law banning HIV-positive travelers from entering the country. The government waived the ban for the meeting, but refused to revoke it entirely, according to the IAS website. Read more via MedPage Today