Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 8 August 1996
About 200 protesters, most of them Africans, demonstrated against a Health Department statement that there was a link between Norwegian heterosexuals catching the HIV virus "and the epidemic in African countries south of Sahara."
"Africans in Norway are outraged by the Health Department's racist statements about Africans being responsible for spreading HIV and AIDS in Norway," a statement by the protesters said.
"The image of Norway in an international context is one of equality and justice. "Unfortunately it seems that these principles are better practised abroad than at home."
Rally organizers later submitted a letter of protest to Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland's office. It was accepted by an official.
The Health Department statement urged Africans who had reason to believe they were carriers of the HIV virus to use protection if they had sex with Norwegians. Two Norwegian women had recently contracted HIV from black Africans, it said.
Statistics from the department said 1,584 people in Norway including 244 African immigrants were HIV positive.
Foreigners make up less than four percent of the 4.3 million population of Norway and two-thirds of them are fellow Europeans. Non-Europeans account for a mere 50,000.
Roger Ingebrigtsen, an political adviser at the Local Government Ministry, defended the effort by authorities to put the focus on Africans and AIDS.
"It is important to put a name to the problems and make them visible. Nobody, not even the immigrants, has anything to gain from seeing difficult social issues being swept under the carpet," he wrote in a comment in Dagbladet daily.
"It is an indisputed fact that people from these countries pose a risk group along with persons who have stayed there. It is however important to stress that it is the act, not the color or the nationality, that poses the risk."
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