Yeltsin OKs AIDS Testing for Foreigners

President Boris N. Yeltsin signed a controversial law Monday requiring AIDS testing of all foreigners living in Russia and ordering the deportation of anyone whose results show they have been infected.

Although the new law is less restrictive than an earlier version passed by the Parliament and vetoed by Yeltsin in February, it immediately drew criticism from AIDS activists as an ineffective and costly violation of human rights.

Russian citizens--who now travel abroad in great numbers--are not required by the law to submit to testing, and the government, which is already struggling to adhere to its budget, will have to finance the mandatory testing for many of the hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in Russia.

The quasi-official Itar-Tass news agency reported that foreigners staying in Russia for more than three months will have the option of getting medical certification from doctors in their own countries in lieu of submitting to Russian testing.

But activists have criticized the law’s provisions on that issue as vague, and they call the legislation a misguided approach to preventing the spread of AIDS.

“People in Russia tend to think that AIDS is spread only by homosexuals, prostitutes and foreigners,” said Leonid Bozhko, technical director of the Aesop AIDS information center in Moscow. “But of course this isn’t true.”

While health officials say they know of 900 Russians who have tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Bozhko said the actual number is probably at least 10 times higher.

Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Russian Center for Combatting AIDS, denounced the law as a measure that not only will do nothing to deter the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus but will also invite international scorn for its disregard of medical privacy.

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The law makes the issuance of visas for foreign diplomats, students, journalists and business people contingent on medical certification that the applicant is HIV-negative. Those already in the country who test positive would be deported once the law takes effect in August, and anyone who fails to provide reliable outside test results could be subject to involuntary blood sampling.

Aesop and other campaigners against the law waged an eleventh-hour push last week to dissuade Yeltsin from signing the bill.

Bozhko said their protests likely fell on deaf ears because the vacationing Yeltsin “has a lot of other worries” with economic turmoil, rising political opposition and the war in breakaway Chechnya.

The AIDS-testing bill has been denounced by opponents from the start as an effort by disgruntled nationalists to blame foreigners for Russia’s many ills.

The version passed in October by Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the Duma, would have forced all visitors, even tourists, to prove they were not infected with the virus.