Simon Mol, on trial for intentionally infecting up to 40 woman with the HIV virus in Poland, died in hospital on Saturday.

He never gave evidence in the court. No case was proven, no justice was ever brought.

Whatever, his legacy on race relations in Poland has not been very positive. We will never now know what his real motives were. I suspect he was, in what they call these days, “in denial” about lots of things in his life.

It’s an awful case with many victims. But one of the nasty strands of a generally ugly reaction to the Mol case was when some showed contempt for the women who contracted HIV. “If they are so dumb to be fooled by someone like Mol, they they deserved it…”, etc.

If anyone met Simon Mol then they were “fooled”. I met him. He seemed a genuine person to me. Lots of the people thought that. Lots.

So to be accused of being “fooled” by him is ridiculous. Even Simon Mol was fooled, by himself.

If you want to see how ugly it got then have a look at, the record for this blog, 166 comments, from an early post I wrote about all this.

That’s the latest lurid expose in the newspapers and television today.

The newspaper Rzeczpospolita and the sensationalist, tabloid TVN program Uwaga claim that Simon Moll – who has given seven women HIV in Poland and is currently in prison waiting to be charged for knowingly spreading the virus – was not politically persecuted in either his home country of Cameroon or in Ghana, where he worked for a while in the early 1990s as a journalist.

The Uwaga program sent a team of journalists to the (very poor) village in Cameroon where he grew up to ‘look for his roots’. After showing his photo to the locals they came upon his brother who took them home to see Moll’s father and mother.

None of the family seemed to know where he was and had not had contact with him for years. When his mother heard what had happened to him recently she burst out crying.

Cue camera zoom in to tight, lingering close up of her tears.

But none of the family or his friends had heard about his ‘political persecution’.

Next the journalists went to Ghana where they made straight for the writers PEN club, of which Moll was once a member.

The PEN club is no more but they found some writers and journalists who knew Simon. They too had never heard of any persecution. In fact, one man they talked to had been to prison nine times for political activities.

The man said that Simon went to Poland as an economic refugee – he just wanted to escape the poverty of Africa – and not a political refugee.

The implication, I think, is that Moll had made the whole persecution story up and in fact 'stole' the life story of his fellow journalist.

The is another sad chapter in a story that you just couldn’t make up.

Or could you?

The saddest part of the TV program was when Simon’s mother, shocked from hearing that her son had HIV, and the Polish police had arrested him for spreading it, sobbed: “I am sick, too [with AIDS?], and I was hoping he would come home to bury me.”

Things get worse for Poland’s celebrity refugee.

As Mol languishes in jail awaiting charges of knowingly spreading HIV to numerous women since he has been in Poland as a refugee since 1999, police will be questioning him on yet another charge.

Rzeczpospolita is reporting today that Mol received one of the five apartments given, annually, by the local council to refugees last year.

Unfortunately, Simon Mol is on the board that decides which refugee gets which apartment.

Oh, dear.

Why does everyone want to make HIV into a Sontagian metaphor? Well, I bet nobody else asked you that today…

I turned on the satellite television in Egypt to watch the evening news on TV Polonia (yes, Polish TV is beamed into the hotels) and there was Simon Mol, handcuffed, walking towards a police van. As he passed the camera he shouted, “The media are manipulating this story – I am the victim.’

For sure the media are distorting elements of the story, as they will; and for sure Mol has been the victim of much in life – that’s why he is in Poland in the first place: but to regard himself as a ‘victim’ in this case is weirdly delusional. With many women HIV infected and many more thinking they might be infected, Simon must be in a very strange place psychologically right now to think he is the victim.

Others however are determined to make a wider point about this – just as Simon Mol has done, and will.

Virtuous blog accused me of something quite nasty. When talking about the Simon Mol posts on this blog (see below) he says I went out in an extreme way to:

‘...defend Mol (maybe not defend, but abstract the case into political sphere away from the actual human suffering) regardless of all. Even if I can appreciate taking a stand of a devil’s advocate, again, the message focuses on the culprit and disregard the victims. In the comments someone notices that the author seems to find Mol suspected of a deed equal to spreading flu, which for me, if proven, would rather amount to a mass murder.

I don’t think that is fair comment at all.

The point of the second Mol post was about how some are trying to turn what are basic human tragedies, lives completely changed, suffering, into a political crusade. It is not me that is doing the abstracting, or the crusading.

(As far as my concern for HIV and AIDS sufferers, I trained as an AIDS information officer back in the late 1980s at University, when the AIDS panic was first sweeping through the UK. Ignorance was rife (many thought you could get HIV from a toothbrush, or from kissing. I have also known people die from the virus. Care I do and have done.)

Margaret Thatcher tried to use the AIDS panic in those early days in Britain to promote what she called ‘Victorian values’. For others it was the ‘wroth of God’, against homosexuals.

So HIV has always been wheeled out to support some kind of political point, both reactionary, or in the form of the dreaded Political Correctness.

This time it's not AIDS and gays, however, it’s AIDS and Africans.

Mol’s behaviour has taken on a much wider significance than to the lives that he has affected. People want to make a point, to push an agenda, to show, as one Polish newspaper headlined it last week: ‘The Consequences of bad ideas.

Peter S Reith – from, I think, the Warsaw theatre crowd that Mol used to hang around with - wrote in Rzeczpospolita that ,”… the ideas that allowed Mol to ravage women must also be held to account.’

These ideas he summarizes as ‘Political Correctness.”

Mol apparently thought that anyone who accused him of being HIV positive was ‘being racist.’ Which, of course, (if he knew that he was already infected - which now seems very possible indeed as he first had a test in 1999 in a refugee camp in Poland - is another example of his capacity for victim based delusions. It seems as though he can’t separate himself and his actions from his position as a black refugee in Poland.

Reith implies Mol yelled at women that even the act of wearing a condom was ‘racist.’

He concludes:

If some women had not been corrupted by the academia and the culture of political correctness to believe that they owed sexual gratification to Simon Mol on account of his skin color and status as a member of an "oppressed" group, this tragedy would have been avoided.

This stretches the meaning, and power, of ‘Political Correctness’ to breaking point, I think...

Watching Ps, Cs and Qs

The classic liberal PC does have many negative aspects. Political Correctness is about ‘speech codes’ – restrictive speech codes; a way of closing off debate; of not being offensive; ‘You can’t say that!’

It all started with the naive belief in liberal academic circles, decades ago that if you changed the composition of words – astronaut instead of space man, chairperson in instead of chairman, etc, sexist thought would simply melt into thin air. Language didn’t reflect reality, it constituted it.

All very daft, of course. By the 1980s ‘PC’ had become a form of political abuse. It became a way the right mocked the left.

But it’s a big jump from that to claiming that young girls had sex with Mol because it was ‘PC’ to do so. The context of speech is important.

Reith writes:

’…for many women, having unprotected sex with a black man fulfilled two politically correct obligations: it was trendy to have sex with a black man, and it was also a sign that one was not prejudiced against blacks.‘

I am sure he never meant this, but Mr Reith seems to rule out the possibility that they might have found black men attractive simply because they found black man attractive.

And anyway, remember too that Poland – which, let’s be honest - has a level of prejudice that I am sure Peter would agree is on a rather different level from where he comes from.

In a context where there is genuine prejudice – much of the time innocent, though sometimes ugly, naivety – the act of showing that you are not prejudice seems a powerful statement. It gives the more ludicrous claims of Simon Mol, about not wearing condoms, some traction, purchase, …even sense.

If these women did have unprotected sex because it was ‘PC’ – is that a supposition? – then the consequences have been very unfortunate, life changing.

But if the PC factor is that important – if - then maybe it’s the context in which Mol finds himself in that feeds the victim status he clearly thinks is the only thing that defines him as a person. But if this were a society that had grown to cope with the immigration of blacks then Mol would seem transparently ridiculous.

Maybe these poor girls believed him because some of it was true?

The case of Simon Mol will become a cause celebre for racists everywhere.

Simon Mol has tested positive for HIV. In itself this is distressing. There are at least four girls who have also tested positive for HIV – with what they are calling an ‘African’ strain of the disease.

But the issue is not whether Simon has HIV – it’s about what Mol’s motives were when having sex with the girls. Polish Radio reports:

Polish Police are looking for women who have had sexual contact with the Cameroonian refugee, poet and journalist Simon Moleke [his proper name], who has been charged and arrested for intentionally infecting women with the HIV virus.

The implication is that Mol knew he had HIV and has been going around Warsaw, not just casually and carelessly having unprotected sex with girls, but trying to give women a potentially deadly disease!

That is an amazing claim and one I don’t know how the police substantiate.

Whatever – the case is taking on a political character. Even in the Polish Radio report, politics creeps in:

The case has surfaced only recently, but as records on the internet forum of the Green Party website show, the intentional spreading of HIV by Moleke might have been known to the leftist activist circles as early as over half a year ago.

I imagine the writer of that report means a post dated June 28, 2006 on the forum of zieloni.org.pl (the Green party web site) warning that Mol was ‘spreading HIV’ around Warsaw.

Mol has connections to the Green Party in Poland.

June, remember, was the month when the claims (in fact, exactly the same text on exactly the same day) that he was deliberately spreading HIV first emerged online at poezja.org , a supposedly cultured web site in Poland for poetry lovers.

In fact, it was someone called ‘ppp’ who posted both warnings (see comments in previous post). So the readers of a poetry web site plus Green Party forum readers knew about this. But they were not trying to keep it a secret. That's why they put this message online.

Racists lick their lips

The crude racism that has been appearing on these web sites (and there has been some nasty stuff) is nothing to remarks made on an international white supremacist web site with the jolly title Pan Aryan National Front.

If the ramblings of racist morons makes you physically sick then don’t read this next bit. Under aliases such as LR Eichmann (naturally) our charming racists comment:

….A gift of multiracialism... HIV, AIDS, sexual diseases, rapes, without forgotting [sic] more steals, more homicides, etc.... Why do even the white girls from Poland believe niggers are good persons?

…….kill him, and send those girls with that mind to the nuns!....or better butcher the nigger…

……Poor white girls.... but they were FUCKING STUPID. Sleep with the dog and wake up with fleas!

And so on, literally ad nauseam.

Mol has a high profile in the Polish media. He is Poland’s ‘celebrity refugee’. Whatever the outcome of this case, racists are going to use it for their own destructive ends.

More?
I am sure poezja.org had a forum about this. But now that forum thread has suddenly disappeared. Why?

African poet, playwright, human rights worker and Poland’s ‘celebrity’ refugee, has been arrested for deliberately spreading HIV to ‘at least’ 100 women in Warsaw.

This story, to anyone who knows the guy, stinks.

The newspapers Dziennik and tabloid Fakt (both owned by the German Axel Springer publisher), splashed headlines all over their front pages today claiming ‘He infected 100 women’!

On the inside pages they describe ‘Simon M’ - a refugee from Cameroon who has won numerous awards for both his artistic and humanitarian work - as a charming charlatan, who knowingly infected unsuspecting girls with the virus.

He would seduce them at artistic parties, he would stop girls in the street and ask them for directions!

The opening paragraph of the Fakt story:

‘Tender words by this well-read, black skinned lover have deceived many Warsaw girls. But Simon only had one thing on his mind – drag them to bed and infect them with the deadly virus HIV.’

I love the ‘black skinned lover’ bit. Later the article says:

‘It’s known that he has seduced at least 100 women.’

Apparently, the accusations that Simon has HIV, knew had HIV, and then deliberately tried to infect ‘at least 100 women’ with HIV, began to circulate on internet forums of arty types in the capital – see poezja.org and teatr.pl (he is a playwright and poet, remember!) when someone posted that he ‘is conscious that he has HIV, but lies, and without scruples knowingly sentences girls to death’!

This ‘warning’ went unheard until December, when the panic began to build after someone responded:

‘I am one of the infected women that you write about. THIS MAN SPREADS HIV.’

On the main evening TVN news the police said that they had received ‘numerous calls’ from women who had been with Simon (is this where the ‘100’ figure comes from?). Four women who have tested positive for HIV (following reading the forums?) had unprotected sex with the guy. He ‘doesn’t like condoms’, said the TV reporter pruriently.

Africans + AIDS + Poland = racism

These allegations will not come as a shock to Simon, sadly. On his web site on Feb 26, 2006, he wrote:

Some three-years ago, my [Polish] girlfriend was forced by her parents to split with me after a 12-month affair. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that their daughter was dating an African. After our split she was further compelled by her relatives to undergo an HIV test to verify her medical state after this ‘unclean affair’ with an African. She did the test, which emerged negative.

As I said, this story smells bad...

Though the article in Fakt claims that the rumours of Simon spreading the disease started last June, it seems that they emerged much earlier. In February last he writes:

Character assassination isn’t a new phenomenon. However, it appears here the game respects no rules. It wouldn’t be superfluous to state that there is an ingrained, hash and disturbing dislike for Africans here. The accusation of being HIV positive is the latest weapon that as an African your enemy can raise against you. This ideologically inspired weapon, is strengthened by the day with disturbing literature about Africa from supposed-experts on Africa, some of whom openly boast of traveling across Africa in two weeks and return home to write volumes. What some of these hastily compiled volumes have succeeded in breeding, is a social and psychological conviction that ‘every African walking the street here is supposedly HIV positive, and woe betide anyone who dares to unravel the myth being put in place.

Anyone who knows Simon – and I have met him several times – finds these accusations incredible, in all meanings of the word.

He is described in the newspapers as a sensitive, intelligent, educated person – and that’s exactly how he seems to me. He is here as a refugee after being persecution in his own country.

Since being in Poland he has played a very active part in various anti-racism campaigns, has had books of poems published and plays put on in the theatre. He has also been a tireless worker with other refugees and those seeking refugee status in Poland (governments here have been completely unprepared for these people, so someone has to help them).

The accusations against him are that:

a) has HIV
b) knows that he has HIV
c) had unprotected sex with women when he knew he had HIV
d) did not tell them he had HIV,
e) and certainly in the FAKT article, tried to infect them with HIV
f) and then when confronted by the women after they discovered points a to e lied about the having HIV in the first place.

If found guilty he could face up to 12 years in jail.

But how we know any of this is not clear at all from the media reports.

Simon is pleading not guilty, of course. It's like one of those off-the-peg stories Polish tabloid journos dream of: 'Black African artistic seducer infects innocent Polish girls with HIV!!!

Knowledge about HIV – and Africans, for that matter - is very limited here. Just ripe for a scare story.

These are very serious allegations, of course, and the fate of not just Simon M but the image of African refugees in Poland rests on the outcome.

Ominously, in February 2006, Simon seemed to know what was coming:

As an activist, I know I have set myself on the firing line.