China AIDS Activist Under House Arrest

Via Reuters AlertNet -

BEIJING, Feb 15 (Reuters) - An aged AIDS activist in central China said she remained under house arrest on Thursday despite abandoning plans to travel to the United States to collect a prize, but she vowed to keep exposing the spread of the disease.

Gao Yaojie helped bring to light the spread of AIDS in her home province Henan, where during the 1990s commercial blood stations often controlled by officials spread the HIV virus among poor farmers eager to sell their blood.

No senior officials have ever been prosecuted or publicly punished for the scandal.

A retired doctor in her eighties, she was due to travel to Washington in March to be honoured at the Vital Voices Global Partnership annual awards. But she told Reuters that from early February police blocked her from travelling to Beijing to obtain a visa.

Gao said that on Wednesday she promised not to go to Washington and asked her sister who lives in Los Angeles to collect the award.

"I had no choice. I had to consider my family and the threats to them," Gao said, using a phone restored only after she agreed not to go to Washington.

But on Thursday morning, four police officers remained on guard outside her apartment in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan.

"I think they'll keep me detained until March," she said. "They don't want me to talk about AIDS, especially to foreigners. But if we don't speak about it, AIDS will keep spreading, and I'm worried about how it's still spreading through blood transfusions."

Vital Voices and the U.S. State Department have expressed concerns about Gao's detention. Officials in Zhengzhou have refused to answer questions from reporters about Gao.