Horrors, highlights from Day One of the World Aids Conference and Cream Coloured Coffee

Picked up the newspaper this morning and sat down in a comfortable spot to read it. I set my recently poured cup of steaming cream coloured coffee down next to me on the side table and removed a cigarette out of the bright orange package and placed it into my mouth. Lighting the cigarette with a wooden match I used my other hand to unfold the newspaper to the front page and read the glaring headlines staring back at me. A national Aids conference was taking place in my home town of Toronto and despite the shame my county should feel over reneging on its promise to deliver Aids medication to needy countries the conference opened to enthusiasm and a keynote speech by Bill Gates of Microsoft fame. Gates spoke for approx. four minutes and stressed that the power to defeat the Aids virus lays in the hands of the world's women and that "this could mark a turning point in the epidemic and we need to make it an urgent priority". Gates was met with thundering applause and what appeared to be unanimous approval to his ideas. Gates continued by outlining that most women in many parts of the world are at the mercy of the men in their lives and do not have the right to refuse sex , let alone sex without a condom. "No matter where she lives", Gates continued, "who she is, or what she does, a women should never need her partners permission to save her own life". These sediments are a direct result of recent innovations in microbicide research and development. A microbicide is a vaginal gel or cream applied prior to sex that stops the transmission of the HIV virus. This gel places the prevention of the virus directly into the hands of women. I only hope that men do not see this innovation as a way of letting them off the hook in terms of prevention. It should not be seen as a shifting of responsibility but instead as an addition to our global arsenal of weapons to be used in the war against Aids.

I noted a small but disturbing notation at the top of the page sending readers further inside the section of newspaper to read about how Aids was being used by Congo rebels as a weapon. Hesitating a bit at the notion, I slowly opened the paper to the page and began to read the chilling account. It would seem that in 1998 and 1999 a group of 2000 Ugandan rebels,each one infected with the deadly HIV virus, were unleashed on an unsuspecting Democratic Republic of Congo and instructed to rape as many women and children as possible in order to start a Congo-wide pandemic. In other word these men were ordered to commit atrocities and basically commit a slow and excessively cruel form of genocide against the most innocent members of this country's population. Not that genocide in itself is not cruel - but to conciously infected thousands of women and children - some children reportedly as young as one - this is staggeringly cruel and aboce all - inhuman. Complaints have been filed with the African Human Rights commission and nearby countries of Rwanda and Uganda have each stated publicly that the country of Congo does not have the right to complain. How they could make these claims is beyond me. How this could happen is beyond me as well.

How could anyone bring themselves to make a decision like this - let alone consider carrying it out? Did an Ugandan Army general wake up one morning, sip at his own cup of cream coloured coffee, look lovingly at his wife and children sitting around the breakfast table and decide that his fellow Africans, that his neighbours should suffer. Separated by little more than imaginary borders and personal politics did these people not deserve the same rights as he and his family did? Did his nieghbours not deserve to have loving wifes and beautiful children. Wifes and children who did not deserve to be viciously raped and even worse - if such a thing is imaginable - raped by mercenaries who were specificly selected for this horrific task because they themselves were already infected with the Aids virus.
I wonder if that general picked up a copy of his local paper, lit a cigarette and read that the Aids virus was running rampant throughout the continent. Is that what inspired conscripting infected mercenaries to deliver the virus across the border? I just cannot imagine what could have brought this idea to fruition...
We will never know the whys behind what happened but I pray to God that the people who made the decisions to commit these atrocities are brought to justice and get the punishment they truly deserve.

A fitting punishment in my eyes would involve the war criminals who committed these crimes and the men who planned and orchestrated this horror being tried by a jury of people who have been infected and forcing some of the men who planned this invasion and infection to meet some of the innocent children, who are now dying of Aids. They need to see with their own eyes the damage their decisions have wrought. They need to look in the eyes of these poor infected children and try and explain their actions to them. When this is over the war criminals need to be placed in a bright cell filled with photos of the people they have hurt and they can spend the remainder of their lives contemplating exactly what they have done.

As for the 2000 Ugandan rapists, since they have already been sentenced to death by Aids, they should be placed in a deep, dark pit of a jail where they can spend the remainder of their infected days reflecting on the evil deeds that they have committed and considering what kind of fate they have to look forward to in the afterlife. I can only hope that there will be some kind of divine punishment for these men.

I pray that the survivors are more forgiving then I am, I hope that they are able to somehow put the horrors that they have experienced behind them and that somehow through modern medicine that they will be able to keep their infections in check and somehow manage to live full and happy lifes.

They deserve to live good lives, despite what has happened to them. I can only hope that they can...