Indonesia AIDS body rejects microchip tagging plan

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A plan by lawmakers in Indonesia's Papua to require HIV patients to be implanted with microchips to stop them infecting others violates human rights and is unworkable, the national AIDS commission said on Thursday.

Under the proposed bylaw, which has caused an uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown "actively sexual behaviour" could have their activity monitored using a microchip.

"We reject this bylaw because it is against human rights and technically cannot be done," Nafsiah Mboi, the secretary of the National Commission on AIDS control, told reporters.

"How can someone know if a person is having sex or jumping and dancing," she said, referring to the plan to monitor patients via satellite to help contain the rapid spread of the disease.

It's never been entirely clear how an implanted microchip would communicate sexual activity to the monitors.

Last week, Papuan lawmaker John Manangsang described the idea as "a simple technology" whereby a signal from the microchip could track a patients movements and be relayed to authorities.

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty of up to six months in jail or 50 million rupiah ($4,115).

But on Thursday Manangsang, who crafted the draft bylaw, told Reuters the bylaw would only initially establish a Papua AIDS Centre to test whether the microchip idea was feasible.

"The problem is we are threatened with extinction," he said.