India to Impose AIDS Test for Tourists and Students
Tourists visiting India for more than one month will be required to undergo AIDS tests and foreign students seeking to enter Indian universities will have to prove they do not have the disease, a Cabinet minister said today.
Human Resource Development Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao told the upper house of Parliament that beginning in the 1988 academic year, foreign students will have to submit to AIDS examinations when they sit for admission tests.
Rao said any student found to have the disease will be denied entry to Indian educational institutions.
Foreign students currently studying in India are already required to undergo AIDS tests and have been told they will not be allowed to sit for scholastic exams if they refuse.
“It is a question of human life . . . there is no discrimination against students of a particular country,” Rao said in reply to parliamentarians’ questions about charges that the tests are aimed mainly at African students, who constitute about 90% of the 25,000 foreign students in India.
African student leaders allege the measure is aimed primarily at Africans. They say the government’s stance is racist and linked to theories that the AIDS virus originated in Africa.
Rao did not say when the mandatory tests for tourists staying in India for more then one month will be introduced.
Officials say five people have died from AIDS in India and another 84 people have been found to be carriers of the virus.
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