At the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games on Sunday, Athens will pass the Olympic flag to China and officially begin the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But while China uses the Olympic flag to polish its international image and attract global investment, local officials in China continue to cover up one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.
China today faces an exploding AIDS crisis. Officially, China admits to 840,000 people living with the AIDS virus, but doctors say there are a million in Henan Province alone. In Henan, as elsewhere in rural China, unsafe blood collection centers run by government officials in the 1990s spread the AIDS virus to villagers who sold their blood. Henan officials have long tried to cover up the epidemic, jailing AIDS activists and expelling journalists who tried to tell the truth.
Whole villages in Henan are dying, leaving behind impoverished orphans. Many cannot afford school fees, and those who can are sometimes turned away by schools that fear AIDS. In the midst of this crisis, student volunteers and grass-roots collectives have tried to fill the gap. Pooling resources and energy, they have established small-scale programs to help the kids. Some, like the founders of the Hong Kong-based Chi Heng Foundation, pay school fees for children whose parents have the AIDS virus. Others, like Li Dan, 26, have set up alternative boarding schools. The Orchid School in Shangqiu, an especially hard-hit Henan city, has 22 students aged from 7 to 14.
Instead of encouraging these programs, however, local Henan officials resent them for attracting international attention to the province's AIDS crisis and to the government's failure to address it. In July, authorities forcibly shut down the Orchid School.
On July 9, according to an eye-witness account given to Human Rights Watch and reports published on the Internet, the provincial government sent at least 100 police officers and officials to seize the 22 children and send them back to their village. The police locked staff and volunteers in a dormitory and chased the children, screaming and crying, through the building. Relatives of the children begged the police to stop; one outraged mother struck an officer. The police retreated, and school staff sent the children back home.
A few days later, the police detained Wang Guofeng and Li Suzhi, an HIV-positive couple who had been community liaisons for the school. The police held Wang and Li for a month on suspicion of incitement, and their health reportedly suffered because of lack of adequate nutrition or antiretroviral treatment. Meanwhile, Li Dan posted messages on his Web site urging his volunteers to stay calm and he led an international campaign to press for the release of Wang and Li. On Aug. 8, the police released Wang and Li on bail but detained Li Dan. After they let him go the following day, Li was beaten by a group of thugs who warned him to stop making trouble.
This series of incidents is part of a pattern of state-sanctioned harassment of grass-roots AIDS outreach programs in Henan. The Orchid School is the third nonprofit facility for children affected by AIDS to be closed by the Henan government this year. In recent years, whenever a senior Chinese or international official has visited Henan, local officials have jailed AIDS activists to stop them protesting. Many have alleged pervasive official corruption and misuse of funds.
Senior government officials in Beijing have taken positive steps on AIDS, condemning discrimination against people with the AIDS virus and promising antiretroviral treatment to many. But provincial officials remain a serious obstacle to change.
The problem is clear: The same officials who profited from the sale of blood and covered up the AIDS epidemic are now administering domestic and international aid funds. The foxes are guarding the hen house.
Despite its new promises, Beijing seems unable or unwilling to bring the Henan government under control. Beijing should require the Henan authorities to re-open the Orchid School and encourage similar nonprofit programs. The international community must demand that Beijing clean up the Henan government before the 2008 Olympics. That would truly give everyone something to cheer about.
Sara Davis tracks China for Human Rights Watch.
