A public health textbook meant to educate youths in Kyrgyzstan about the dangers of AIDS has sparked several antisemitic reactions because it has information about safe sex and its author is also a prominent leader of the country’s small Jewish community, according to a September 20, 2004 report by the AEN news agency. Fifty thousand copies of Boris Shapiro’s textbook “A Healthy Way to Live” have already been printed for distribution in Kyrgyzstan’s schools, with the express recommendation of the Ministry of Education.

Students of Islamic departments in several Bishkek universities recently held a protest outside the ministry’s buildings which reportedly featured antisemitic slogans, calls for punishing Mr. Shapiro, and threats to organize a public book burning. The Kyrgyz parliament held hearings on the issue, featuring Mr. Shapiro, along with local writers and other intellectuals, some of whom argued that: “The Jews are specifically, on the orders of the West, perverting our youth”; “If the author wasn’t a Jew, he wouldn’t have written such lies about our people”; and “This book was published by a Jew with Jewish money, it should be banned!”

According to AEN, “nobody [in the parliament] reproached” the speakers for their antisemitic slanders, leaving “the Jewish community in shock.”

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