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rfmcdonaldVia Boingboing, I've discovered a recent Reuters report that Mozambique's Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, head of that country's Roman Catholic Church, believes that condoms and anti-retroviral drugs intended for Mozambicans were infected with HIV by Europeans in order to allow Africa's recolonization.
Via a Comment is free thread that was colonized early on by AIDS denialists, I was able to discover a number of Portuguese-language news articles in which Archbishop Chimoio denies having claimed that the condoms and medicines were infected with HIV. In Chimoio's version, he "only" said that condoms shouldn't be used, despite, say, the apparent relative success of "abstinence plus" programs which include information about condoms in controlling HIV and other STDs, making him not so much a wild-eyed conspiracy-monger as an ideologically-blinded man who prefers a respectful population to a living one.
This kind of confusion would be serious in any country, but it's potentially catastrophic in Mozambique. According to UNICEF, while the Mozambican HIV/AIDS epidemic is not as severe as South Africa's, it's certainly bad enough.
All that I can say at this point is that conspiracies like the one attributed to the Archbishop, as the original author at Comment is free noted, spring up whenever people are confronted with facts that are either seemingly inexplicable or horrifying. Conspiracy theories which claim that our world's shadowy overlords want to cull their subject population or subsets of our world's population are quite common, perhaps especially in Africa where premature mortality is so high already. Compare the panic in northern Nigeria that took place several years ago when some Muslims decided to believe that the polio vaccine given to local children was contaminated either with HIV or sterility-inducing chemicals. (It passed, eventually, after polio infections among children in Nigeria and neighbouring countries shot up to record highs.)
The head of the Catholic church in Mozambique said on Wednesday he believed some European-made condoms were deliberately tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus to kill African people.
"I know of two countries in Europe who are making condoms with (the) virus on purpose, they want to finish with African people as part of their programme to colonise the continent," Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told Reuters.
"If we are not careful we will finish in one century.
"I also know some companies who are manufacturing anti-retroviral drugs already infected with the virus, also in order to finish quickly the African people", Chimoio said.
He declined to name the European countries in question or the source of his allegations.
Via a Comment is free thread that was colonized early on by AIDS denialists, I was able to discover a number of Portuguese-language news articles in which Archbishop Chimoio denies having claimed that the condoms and medicines were infected with HIV. In Chimoio's version, he "only" said that condoms shouldn't be used, despite, say, the apparent relative success of "abstinence plus" programs which include information about condoms in controlling HIV and other STDs, making him not so much a wild-eyed conspiracy-monger as an ideologically-blinded man who prefers a respectful population to a living one.
This kind of confusion would be serious in any country, but it's potentially catastrophic in Mozambique. According to UNICEF, while the Mozambican HIV/AIDS epidemic is not as severe as South Africa's, it's certainly bad enough.
The first case of HIV/AIDS was diagnosed in 1986 in Mozambique. This was followed by a steady increase in the prevalence rate up to an estimated 16.2% among the population aged 15 to 49 years in 2004. In July 2004, the Government declared HIV/AIDS a national emergency.
The epidemic has reduced life expectancy from 41 years in 1999 to 38.1 years in 2004. On average, 500 new infections occur every day, 90 of them among young children through mother-to-child transmission. Approximately 1.6 million Mozambicans are living with HIV or AIDS, more than 90,000 of them are children under 15 years of age.
[. . .]
Approximately 1.6 million Mozambicans are living with HIV or AIDS, more than 90,000 of them are children under 15 years of age. Girls and young women are particularly vulnerable. In the age groups 15-19 years and 20-24 years, their prevalence rate is three times higher than that of boys and young men. In 2004, HIV/AIDS prevalence was 2.6% among 15-19 year old boys and 6.9% among 20-24 year-old men compared to 8.1% and 20.9% among girls and women of those age groups.
All that I can say at this point is that conspiracies like the one attributed to the Archbishop, as the original author at Comment is free noted, spring up whenever people are confronted with facts that are either seemingly inexplicable or horrifying. Conspiracy theories which claim that our world's shadowy overlords want to cull their subject population or subsets of our world's population are quite common, perhaps especially in Africa where premature mortality is so high already. Compare the panic in northern Nigeria that took place several years ago when some Muslims decided to believe that the polio vaccine given to local children was contaminated either with HIV or sterility-inducing chemicals. (It passed, eventually, after polio infections among children in Nigeria and neighbouring countries shot up to record highs.)
