France. Radio spots talk about AIDS, but what do they say?

"Safe sex is beautiful," says Cheb Khaled

The familiar Beur FM jingle comes on. "She was timid," explains Khaled, "and I didn’t have a rubber. Good thing she did, I thought it was erotic. Safe sex is beautiful."

It’s not a song (yet), it’s one of 60 spots in a new, fun campaign put together by Beur FM to better inform the Maghrebi community in France about HIV and AIDS.

Algerian Raï star-away-from-home Khaled is the only singer to have taken part.

The spots are mostly in French, with some Arabic, given Beur FM’s mostly young listeners for whom French is the primary language. Basic info mixes with testimony from young, presumably-straight Arab men.

Mourad, who is HIV+ and a former iv drug user, talks about the "taboo" around the virus, and wishes "more of the family supported me. My mother would like to say that her son has made it in life, but this isn’t the case. I’m HIV+, I’ve been in prison, and I can’t imagine my mother bragging about it."

Saïd talks about taking an HIV test He was at least as anxious about his neighborhood finding out he did it as about testing positive. But it turns out Saïd is negative.

The series is a convincing rebuttal to those who claim "nothing has been done" about primary prevention and media for the Arab community.

No, the problems are elsewhere. First, the spots focus on all health aspects of HIV and AIDS, but much too little time is devoted to access to health care. Given that French law recognizes the right of "illegals" to free medical care, this is especially important.

Second, although young men speak, women are talked about after journalist Selma Chnabel’s introductions of the day’s topic.

It is here that public health jargon and its coterie of social workers and other "experts" substitute for community voices. The women in the spots are the mothers of the HIV+, or they are HIV+ themselves and are advised explicitly not to have children or to breastfeed. The president of the Tunisian Workers Association (ATF) cites cases of immigrant workers who infected their wives upon returning home.

When one spot finally reveals that "women are also affected by HIV," it is only to tell us that this is so... in Africa. The spot does state that "women often have less freedom than men do in choosing their partners."

Founded in November 1981, Beur FM - then known as Radio Beur - was one of several activist radio stations anchored in the movement of young Arabs destined to shake up the racist foundations of French society in 1983 with the March for Equality.

At the time, founder Nacer Kettane considered Radio Beur one means to the end of "taking the political, economic, and media power." Ketanne, a doctor as well as an activist, would be among the first to start HIV prevention work in the estates surrounding Paris.

Today, Beur FM is a commercial radio station with an "ethnic" audience. It is heartening to see that, while far from perfect, the station’s new campaign is one means to give some much-needed information back to the

community.