Posted on October 11, 2004

AIDS ‘Made To Kill Blacks’

News.com.au (Australia), Oct. 11

KENYA’S new Nobel Peace Prize winner believes the virus causing AIDS was a deliberately created biological agent unleashed on Africans.

“Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that,” Wangari Maathai told a news conference a day after winning the prize.

Ms Maathai, an ecologist and trained biologist, became the first African woman to win the prize on Friday for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation.

“Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet.

“It’s true there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq.

“We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare,” said Ms Maathai, also Kenyan deputy environment and natural resources minister, who has gained a reputation as a fearless speaker.

“In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare,” she added.

“Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.”

Africa accounts for 25 million out of the estimated 38 million people across the world infected with HIV, and the vast majority of infected Africans are women, according to UNAIDS estimates.

In August Kenya’s daily Standard newspaper quoted Ms Maathai saying HIV/AIDS was created by scientists for the purpose of mass extermination.

“We know that the developed nations are using biological warfare, leaving guns to the primitive people,” the Standard quoted Ms Maathai as telling a public workshop in the central Kenyan town of Nyeri on August 30.

“AIDS (is) 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.”