Chinese AIDS activist who caught the virus as a boy is detained by police, colleagues say

AIDS activists: Chinese colleague detained

BEIJING — Police in central China have detained an AIDS activist who contracted the virus as a boy and whose tireless campaigning for the rights of those with the disease angered local authorities, his fellow activists said Saturday.

Under pressure to end Tian Xi’s campaigning, police from his home town of Gulu detained the 23-year-old on Tuesday and first held him at a county hospital before his family lost track of his whereabouts on Friday, the activists said.

Tian traveled frequently between Gulu and Beijing, petitioning officials in the capital to compensate him and others who contracted AIDS through tainted blood supplies. In recent weeks, Tian had obtained official documents in which leaders from Gulu and Xincai county, where the town is located, ordered police to stop his activism, according to the Chinese advocacy group Aizhixing and Sara L.M. Davis, a New York-based activist.

“It seems absolutely clear that this was related to his petitioning,” said Davis, who traded e-mails with Tian 10 days ago when he was in Beijing. She has worked with Tian, bringing him to an AIDS conference last year, and described him as “a very impassioned advocate.”

After ignoring or demonizing people with AIDS, the authoritarian government has taken a more compassionate line on the disease and combating its spread in recent years. But people with AIDS still face difficulties in getting treatment and compensation, and authorities from Beijing to the local level remain deeply suspicious of independent activists.

Tian’s case is emblematic of China’s troubles in dealing with AIDS. Unregulated schemes to buy blood and sell it to hospitals ended up contaminating blood supplies in central Henan province in the mid-1990s.

Tian was a third grader when rough play during primary school left him with a mild concussion and doctors in Xincai county gave him a blood transfusion, according to his blog. A blood test given to him when he got sick in 2004 confirmed he had HIV.