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BALAJI Sadasivan, junior health minister and a rising political star, said the government was studying proposals to make it a criminal offence for anyone who is HIV-positive to have unprotected sex, whether or not they know they have the virus.
Dr Sadasivan said the proposed law was meant to force people who "lead risky lifestyles" to take tests for the Aids virus and follows recommendations there should be compulsory pre-natal and pre-marital screening. Widespread testing would also help the government in tracing contacts among those with the HIV virus to slow its spread, when there could be up to 8,000 undiagnosed HIV/Aids cases in addition to 2,000 identified in the city-state of 4.0m people, he said.
But local activist groups, such as Action for Aids, worry any such law could discourage gays from taking the test since homosexuality is a criminal offence in Singapore, and might create fears the government was compiling data to conduct a "witch hunt" against infected people.
There are concerns among local gays that the government is singling them out for blame in the rise of Aids infections, which increased by 28 per cent last year to a record 311 cases. Speaking to parliament last month, Dr Sadasivan said a local gay and lesbian festival held every August since 2000 on the resort island of Sentosa might have caused the big jump in Aids cases.
Gay activists complained such statements could promote homophobia.
The government has given less public attention to the spread of Aids through prostitution, they say.
Prostitution is legal in Singapore and licensed sex workers are given regular medical examinations. But there has been a growing influx of illegal prostitutes, mainly from China, into the city-state, while brothels on the nearby Indonesian island of Batam attract many Singaporean men.
Gay groups say the government must share the blame for the rise in Aids cases because public health policies have failed to target the gay community. Making homosexual acts legal would help improve contacts with public health officials, they say.
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