[Ip-health] AP: Chinese Health Official Jailed Must be Freed

[Kate Krauss]

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The Global Fund is just about to announce a $100 million contribution to
China to combat its AIDS epidemic-- a lot of the money to be spent in Henan
county, which seems to be run by a local mafia sanctioned by the Central
Government. Henan officials are responsible for infecting as many as 1
million people in that county through blood selling schemes. This is the
same county where hundreds of police and hired thugs terrorized an AIDS
village in June and arrested a dozen people, several of whom are still in
jail.

At UNGASS recently, China's Deputy MoH apparently lied to the world about
the number of people with AIDS in China (since when has it been 840,000?)
and indicated that the number came as part of a joint study by UNAIDS, WHO
and China-- which UNAIDS, at least, denies.

So China is still lying about the most basic facts about its AIDS epidemic,
and persecuting people who are trying, in the interests of public health, to
tell the truth.

One question: what will international funders, who hold the cards right now,
do about it?

Kate Krauss
AIDS Policy Project
+1 215-545-3104

Health official jailed for distributing information on AIDS scandal must be
freed
2003/10/7
BEIJING, AP
A human rights organization demanded Tuesday that China release a health
official reportedly convicted of circulating a restricted government report
on a blood-selling scandal that spread AIDS in a central Chinese province.

It was at least the second such legal action involving the same government
report.

Human Rights Watch said Ma Shiwen should be freed immediately and not be
punished for distributing the report, which it said blamed national
authorities for the spread of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in the
central Chinese province of Henan. The report apparently was given to
Chinese AIDS activists.

"The Chinese government is targeting honest health officials, but it has
done little to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Henan," said Brad
Adams, executive director of the Asia division of the New York-based rights
group.

"China must release Ma Shiwen immediately and instead hold accountable the
government officials responsible for this crisis," he said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch didn't say which court in Henan convicted Ma. A duty
officer at Henan's People's High Court, reached by telephone Tuesday, told
The Associated Press she did not know which court had been responsible for
the case and had no information about it.

China has begun to release information about AIDS after denying for years
that it was a problem. The Health Ministry said last month that China has
about 1 million people infected with the AIDS virus. It said the figure
could reach 10 million by the end of the decade without proper prevention
measures.

The government's approach to health policy has drawn additional scrutiny in
recent months because of the SARS outbreak that killed 349 people in
mainland China and infected thousands. The Beijing leadership was initially
reluctant to release SARS information but adopted a less publicly stringent
policy after coming under withering international criticism.

In the Henan AIDS scandal, dealers in the 1990s bought blood from villagers
and pooled it, mixing healthy blood with HIV-infected blood. They then
extracted plasma, a blood component with medical uses, and re-injected the
rest of the blood back into those who sold it.

Human Rights Watch said Ma was arrested in August and charged with
circulating state secrets by using his computer to send the report to AIDS
activists in China; earlier in the year he had been arrested and released on
the same charges, it said.

There is no indication that the Chinese government has announced Ma's
arrest.

Last year, Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai was released after being held
for nearly a month by state security agents who claimed he leaked official
secrets by distributing a report about AIDS in Henan. Human Rights Watch
said that was the same report that Ma had circulated.

China's official Xinhua News Agency said then that Wan was released after he
confessed to having "delivered some illegally acquired interior classified
documents of relevant state departments to overseas individuals, media
sources and Web sites." He distributed the report on the Internet.

The report, by the Henan Health Department, blamed the national Ministry of
Health, the army, illegal blood collection centers and the lack of
information about AIDS for the spread of HIV in Henan, Human Rights Watch
said.

It said Henan authorities had restricted access to the internal report that
condemned government authorities for their role in the blood scandal on the
grounds that it is a state secret.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a more general report in
Hong Kong that accused China's government of fueling the spread of AIDS by
refusing treatment and hiding information.
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