Why an Indian MP might refuse to eat with you or lend you a jacket

Indian health groups recently applauded a government plan to get tens of thousands of rural politicians involved in the fight against the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic. But let's hope they don't take their lead from their counterparts in the national parliament.

A survey conducted by the Indian Association of Parliamentarians on Population and Development has highlighted a staggering lack of awareness among parliamentarians about how the virus is spread.

The poll of 250 MPs in India's lower and upper houses (about a third of the total) revealed that:

• Nearly two-thirds wrongly thought the virus could be spread by sharing clothes with an infected person.
• 56 percent felt it was possible to catch the virus by sharing food and utensils with an infected person.
• 40 percent felt working with an infected person was enough to catch the disease.
• 22.8 percent believed the virus could be spread by using a toilet that's also used by HIV-positive people.

On the upside, three-quarters were aware that using a condom reduces the risk of contracting HIV.

While the prime minister described the findings as "provocative", Anjali Gopalan, executive director of the leading anti-AIDS group Naz Foundation India, said: "I am not surprised at all."

What makes the MPs' lack of awareness particularly disturbing is that India now has the world's largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS (5.7 million), according to U.N. AIDS agency figures.

Megan Rowling
AlertNet journalist

Kony in a corner

Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony is a man with a price on his head. The International Criminal Court wants him for war crimes allegedly committed during a brutal insurgency that has uprooted about 2 million people. Massacring and mutilating civilians, and abducting tens of thousands of children to serve in the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army, Kony's followers have cut a swathe of terror through northern Uganda for nearly two decades.

Not the sort of folk you'd expect to find championing the cause of justice and forgiveness. But Kampala's Monitor newspaper reports that the LRA, now in peace talks with the Ugandan government, has written to South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu asking for help setting up a truth and reconciliation commission on northern Uganda.

Tutu headed South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed in 1996 to hear the painful stories of victims and survivors of apartheid crimes.

The LRA's request to Tutu may sound rich, given its reputation for cutting off the lips of its victims and forcing abducted children to murder their parents. But even the LRA cares about public relations, as shown at Kony's recent meeting with journalists on the Sudan-Congo border. "I am a man, I am a human being, I am Joseph Kony," he said, fidgeting nervously as cameras clicked.

Whatever he is, Kony is backed into a corner. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says he has authorisation from Kinshasa to attack the LRA's base in eastern Congo if the peace talks fail. And the ICC arrest warrant must weigh heavily, especially now that Liberian warlord Charles Taylor is behind bars in The Hague, charged with crimes against humanity for backing rebels who raped and mutilated civilians during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.

So where is a retired rebel chief to go, assuming peace does come at last to Uganda's war-weary Acholiland? The Monitor reports that Kony has formally asked the Central African Republic for asylum.

The LRA leader apparently thinks fondly of CAR, and even has a base at Bamboute, about 1,300 km east of Bangui, according to Ugandan intelligence sources cited by The Monitor. CAR denies that Kony has a base there, the article says.

The Monitor article says CAR's president, Gen. Francois Bozize, sent his chief of staff to Uganda to discuss Kony's request with Museveni over the weekend, although Ugandan officials deny any such meeting took place. If nothing comes of this, it's hard to imagine where else Kony might turn.

Tim Large
AlertNet deputy editor