- Originally published on August 31, 2004 in the East African Standard [here
]
By Amos Kareithi
Assistant Minister Prof Wangari Maathai yesterday claimed that HIV/Aids was a biological weapon manufactured by the developed world to wipe out the Black race from developing countries.
Maathai's comments, while addressing a public workshop in Nyeri, are bound to spark off a major controversy on the origins of HIV/Aids, which continues to wreak grief and devastation on the African continent.
She started by giving her academic orientation as a student of biology. She said for decades Africans had been naive in not questioning where the disease had come from, saying that the theory that it originated from monkeys was a white lie.
"We know that the developed nations are using biological warfare, leaving guns to the primitive people. They have the resources to do this," Maathai charged.
Defending her stand the assistant minister for environment and natural resources said if Adolph Hitler was capable of wiping out six million Jews by burning them, what if he had weapons of mass destruction.
"That is why Iraq was invaded. Whoever went there knew what such weapons look like. You can not go to look for something you have never seen," she argued. She argued that the victims of these "biological weapons" have been naive in accepting any theories advanced without any questions.
"Do not be naive. Aids are not a curse from God to Africans or the Black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did," she said.
Maathai wondered why if the virus was from the Congo Forest where it allegedly infected monkeys, how come the locals did not succumb to it until it in the 1980s.
She countered that Aids was a deliberate machination of some scientists whose sole aim was to exterminate some races from the surface of the earth. She told the workshop that the most effective control method by scientists was faulty because condoms could not effectively keep the virus at bay.
"If a doctor operating an HIV Aids infected patient puts on three pairs of gloves when operating, how is just one condom is expected to prevent the disease. These gadgets have been known to burst and to tear," she continued.
She said the masses had very few choices but to use condoms. She said it had taken Kenya more than 15 years to realise that Aids was worse than any other external or internal enemy.
"Kenya is still along way in dealing with stigma and discrimination meted out to those affected. Some of the money used to fight Aids should go towards this area," she concluded.