BEIJING: A Chinese woman with HIV was forced to return to her home province after ceremonies in Beijing marking World Aids Day, during a week in which local officials sought to downplay unflattering exposure of the disease.
Ms Li Xige, who had taken part in Aids awareness activities in the capital since last month, said she was escorted home to Henan province on Tuesday and told to stop talking or she would end up in jail.
Henan was at the centre of Chinese Aids infections in the 1990s, when reckless blood-buying schemes and a lack of testing allowed the virus to spread to recipients of blood transfusions.
Five officials from her Ningling county home are now preventing her from leaving home, she said by telephone.
Ms Li contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1995 and passed it to her daughters, one of whom has died of Aids. She had previously been under house arrest because of her search for redress.
She said she went to Beijing to seek compensation and judicial action.
'I want them to take responsibility for not having told me for so many years that I had this... I've been from government offices to court to government offices again, bounced about like a ball.'
HIV sufferers have embarrassed the Henan government, which has sought to block media coverage of the issue.
Last week, a crew from Belgian television channel VRT was attacked when trying to report on Aids villages in Henan, Mr Tom Van de Weghe told the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.
Crew members were questioned by police and their vehicle pulled over by people identified as local officials. Tapes were damaged, equipment and money stolen and Mr Van de Weghe said he was hit on the head.
Henan foreign affairs information officer Wang Yuejin told Chinese media that Mr Van de Weghe was followed by Aids patients and local officials, who feared the influence of his interviews of Aids patients and asked for the footage back.
