Recently in AIDS / HIV Category

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
31 July 2009

In the realm of potential threats to China's stability, an organization that advocates on behalf of people infected with hepatitis B would seem to be low risk.

But on Wednesday, the group's director, Lu Jun, found himself squaring off against four security officials who were trying to cart away stacks of literature they claimed had been printed without official permission.

In the end, Mr. Lu scored a partial victory. After eight hours looking through drawers and photographing volunteers, the inspectors walked off with 90 pamphlets, but Mr. Lu prevented them from delving into the group's computer files. "I fear this is not the end of it," he said Thursday.

The raid on Mr. Lu's organization, the Yi Ren Ping Center, comes at a precarious time for China's nongovernmental organizations, many of which operate in a kind of legal gray zone. Two weeks ago, officials used a bureaucratic infraction as the reason to shut down the country's pre-eminent legal rights center, Gongmeng, or Open Constitution Initiative. The closing followed a separate disbarment of 53 lawyers known for taking on civil rights and corruption cases. Just before dawn on Wednesday, the founder of Gongmeng, Xu Zhiyong, was taken into police custody, and he has not been heard from since.

"The permissible space in which civil society groups can operate was already small, but right now that circle is getting smaller and smaller," said Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China, which is based in New York. "If an organization is creating an independent voice, putting together a newsletter or organizing people in any way, it's going to feel the full brunt of the authorities."

Although it is unclear exactly why the government is tightening its grip on such organizations, legal experts and rights activists generally agree that it may be related to the celebrations, three months from now, of the 60th anniversary of China's Communist revolution. A similar clampdown took place in the months before the 2008 Summer Olympics, when security officials in Beijing stepped up the harassment of dissidents and encouraged thousands of migrant workers to return to the countryside.

"It's basically a foolish attempt to make the year as peaceful and uneventful as possible," said Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer who was among those blocked from renewing their licenses.

Another explanation, Mr. Jiang and others say, is that some powerful segments of China's leadership feel threatened by the rise of independent entities working to advance causes like labor rights or clean water, or in the case of the Yi Ren Ping Center, protection for people with hepatitis B.

There is widespread trepidation over hepatitis B in China, a fear that has been intensified by an explosion in advertising for medical testing services and sham cures. Even though it is preventable with a vaccine -- and most of those infected will not become ill -- state-owned companies, medical schools and food-processing plants have come to believe that it is sensible policy to bar the infected.

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By Jill McGivering | BBC World News
February 18, 2009

Chinese officials have said that HIV/Aids was the leading cause of death last year, compared with other infectious diseases.

It is thought to be the first time this has happened.

A report by the country's state media said HIV/Aids had led to the deaths of almost 7,000 people in the first nine months of 2008.

The number of deaths caused by tuberculosis and rabies fell back into second and third place.

The numbers are increasing dramatically - China's Ministry of Health say that until three years ago, fewer than 8,000 people altogether had died from HIV/Aids.

By last year, the total had risen to five times that many.

Data on HIV in China are still unreliable. Official reporting of cases does seem to have improved.

The central authorities seem more willing to recognise HIV as a public health crisis and address it with education campaigns.

But there are still concerns that officials at local and provincial level are under-reporting, either by mistake or because they think it's not in their interest to show rises.

This latest news comes as the spread of HIV in China has entered a dangerous new phase.

Initially it was concentrated in high-risk populations, injecting drug users in particular.

Infection from contaminated blood transfusions was also common.

More sex

But now the main cause of transmission is thought to be unsafe sex.

China is still a deeply conservative society - but it is also going through a period of rapid social change.

Greater freedom of movement means millions of migrant workers have left small communities to enjoy the anonymity of cities.

Male workers, away from their families, have more sexual opportunity.

Prostitution has increased. Premarital sex is also becoming more acceptable.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation warned of a steep rise in HIV amongst Asian men who have sex with men, unless prevention programmes targeting them were greatly improved.

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By Canadian Broadcasting Company | cbcnews.ca
November 29, 2008

A Belgian TV journalist and his crew have been assaulted while reporting on AIDS in Central China.

Belgian journalist Tom Van de Weghe and his team from the public television network VRT were attacked on their way to interview several AIDS groups, said a statement released Friday by VRT.

It echoes an incident in the spring in which journalists from the American news program 60 Minutes were assaulted while attempting to film a plant processing toxic waste near the South China town of Shenzhen.

Van de Weghe and his crew were beaten and then robbed of their cash as well as their microphones and batteries by a dozen men recruited by authorities in Henan province, said the statement.

Beijing promised free access to foreign media reporting in China starting a year before the Olympics and recently extended the rules.

The Belgian channel is demanding an apology from Chinese authorities and payment or compensation for the damaged equipment.

VRT also wants a guarantee that its accredited correspondent could work in China without interference.

There's no response yet from Chinese authorities.

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By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
October 24, 2008

Hu Jia, a soft-spoken, bespectacled advocate for democracy and human rights in China, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe's most prestigious human rights prize, on Thursday. The award was a pointed rebuke of China's ruling Communist Party that came as European leaders were arriving in Beijing for a weekend summit meeting.

Mr. Hu, 35, was given the prize by the European Parliament despite warnings from Beijing that his selection would harm relations with the European Union.

Last year, Mr. Hu testified via video link before a hearing of the European Parliament about China's human rights situation. Weeks later, he was jailed and later sentenced to three and a half years in prison for subversion based on his writings criticizing Communist Party rule.

Mr. Hu has been one of China's leading figures on a range of human rights issues, while also speaking out on behalf of AIDS patients and for environmental protection. He had been considered a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, but lost to the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari.

"Hu Jia is one of the real defenders of human rights in the People's Republic of China," said the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering. "The European Parliament is sending out a signal of clear support to all those who support human rights in China."

The timing may make for a frosty weekend in Beijing, where European leaders are to meet with top Chinese officials at the Asia-Europe summit meeting, held every two years. This year, the global financial crisis is expected to dominate, and cooperation will be high on the agenda.

In Beijing on Thursday, Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, called for "unprecedented levels of global coordination."

"It's very simple: we swim together, or we sink together," he said in comments reported by The Associated Press.

Behind the scenes, China had lobbied against Mr. Hu's candidacy for the Sakharov Prize. On Oct. 16, Song Zhe, the Chinese ambassador to the European Union, wrote a critical letter to Mr. Pöttering.

"If the European Parliament should award this prize to Hu Jia, that would inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to China-E.U. relations," Mr. Song wrote, according to The Associated Press.

China had also warned against awarding Mr. Hu the Nobel Peace Prize, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, had described him in scathing terms as a convicted criminal.

"The Chinese government will be upset," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has written essays with Mr. Hu. "But as a responsible nation that is trying to integrate into the international community, China has to understand that its conduct should follow international protocols. It should embrace the criticism as an opportunity to improve China's human rights condition."

Mr. Hu remains imprisoned in Beijing and could not be reached for comment. His wife, Zeng Jinyan, a prominent blogger and human rights activist, also could not be contacted. She has lived for months under house arrest with the couple's infant daughter.

The award to Mr. Hu is an embarrassment for the Communist Party two months after China's successful staging of the Olympic Games. During the Olympics, the Chinese government proved it could smoothly manage the world's biggest sporting event, but the government also prevented demonstrations at designated protest zones, instituted broad censorship restrictions on the domestic news media and placed numerous dissidents under house arrest or surveillance.

Mr. Hu's conviction in April was part of a nationwide crackdown against dissidents in what many human rights advocates considered a pre-Olympic silencing campaign. Mr. Hu, a Buddhist, has dedicated himself to a range of issues during the past 12 years, including environmental protection, helping AIDS patients, championing the legal rights of Chinese citizens and promoting greater democracy.

He also used a personal Web site and e-mail messages to become a one-man clearinghouse of information on rights abuses and other controversies that officials preferred to keep quiet.

"Whatever he does, he always stands in the forefront," Mr. Teng said in an earlier interview. "Everything he wrote, everything he said, is straight from his heart. We have poor people and marginalized people in society whose voices are being muzzled. Hu Jia was trying to be the spokesman for the unheard voices."

Mr. Hu graduated from Beijing's Capital University of Economics and Business in 1996 and almost immediately plunged into China's nascent civil society. He traveled to Inner Mongolia to plant trees as a measure to slow the advance of the Gobi Desert.

By 2000, China was facing the rapid spread of AIDS, a problem the government had initially denied and remained reluctant to publicly confront. Mr. Hu formed a nongovernmental organization, Loving Source, and focused on caring for people infected with H.I.V. in a blood-selling scandal in Henan Province.

Gao Yaojie, a prominent advocate for AIDS patients in China, recalled how Mr. Hu once rode a bicycle down a rutted dirt road to reach an isolated village decimated by AIDS. The road became narrower and potted with holes until Mr. Hu simply put the bike on his shoulder and walked to deliver help to a village where local officials were trying to cover up the problem.

"We didn't do anything wrong," Dr. Gao said in an interview earlier this month. "The only thing we did was to help H.I.V.-positive people. But we were always under great pressure from the government."

Mr. Hu later began joining Internet petition campaigns calling for the release of political prisoners, while also calling on the authorities to uphold legal rights under the Chinese Constitution.

His activism quickly made him a target. In 2006, he spent 168 days under house arrest. Rather than disappear from public view, he produced a documentary, "Prisoners in Freedom City," which included video of state security agents harassing his wife as she tried to leave their apartment complex, which is known as Bo Bo Freedom City.

Indeed, as Mr. Hu faced constant surveillance and harassment, he continued to use the Internet to push for political reform and publicize abuses. His testimony via video link before the European parliamentary committee came last November.

"It is ironic that one of the people in charge of organizing the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations," he testified. "It is very serious that the official promises are not being kept before the Games."

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By Tan Ee Lyn | REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
October 10, 2008

Drug-resistant HIV strains are turning up in parts of China as the virus stretches beyond high-risk groups and gains a stronger foothold in the general population, a leading Chinese AIDS researcher said.

Chen Zhiwei, director of the AIDS Institute in Hong Kong, described the trends as "alarming" and warned that Chinese AIDS patients could get in trouble because there were very few HIV drugs available in China.

"All these drug-resistant mutations are in China now, they are emerging in Chinese patients. The major worry is whether the drug-resistant virus (strains) will spread," Chen said.

"We are studying whether that is happening, but that will be the case if you don't provide proper treatment," he told Reuters.

"If drug resistant virus (strains) spread in China, we don't have enough selection of (drugs) that are made available," Chen said, adding that researchers had urged China to import more varieties of HIV drugs.

China has only seven of the more than 20 different HIV drugs available, which means patients end up with limited options once they develop resistance to certain drugs.

Although HIV infection is incurable, cocktails of the drugs can control the virus. But drug adherence is bad in China's rural regions due to poor patient knowledge, inaccessible healthcare and a lack of health workers to explain to patients the importance of keeping to drug regimens.

Chen's warning comes after he and his colleagues published an article in Nature last week, detailing how HIV infections were rising sharply among women and gay and bisexual men in China.

There were some 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases in China as of October 2007, up 8 percent from 2006. Some 38 percent of cases were attributed to heterosexual contact, more than triple the 11 percent in 2005 -- when the bulk of infections were occurring among injecting drug users and through blood transmissions.

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