China bans AIDS rights meeting, group says

By REUTERS | iva (uncensored) Yahoo! News
29 July 2007

China has banned AIDS activists from holding a meeting on the rights of people with the disease, one of the organisers said on Sunday, citing official fears over foreign involvement in the sensitive subject.

The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS.

But government authorities told the New York-based Asia Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong in the south, said Sara Davis, one of the organisers.

"Authorities informed us that the combination of AIDS, law and foreigners was too sensitive," Davis told Reuters. There were no plans to reschedule the meeting, she said.

Phone calls to government spokesmen in Guangzhou and Beijing were not answered on Sunday.

China has become increasingly open about AIDS in recent years, facing up to an epidemic once stigmatized as a disease of the West.

The nation had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.

But the United Nations estimates the true number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country to be around 650,000.

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