Washington Blade - September 6, 2002

The renowned Chinese AIDS activist who vanished in Beijing Aug. 24 has been an outspoken advocate for gay men and other groups hit hardest by the epidemic.

The Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday, Sept. 4, that activists and friends now say Dr. Wan Yanhai is alive and safe. But they were reluctant to say much else because of fear of reprisals.

While Wan was a staff member at the National Health Education Institute from 1988 to 1994, he established the first HIV/AIDS telephone hotline in China and conducted a survey on gay men and HIV/AIDS-related social behavior.

In 1992, Wan, whose wife, Su Zhaosheng, is a college student in Los Angeles, coordinated "Men's World," a health-promotion group for gay men. He also served as host of a talk show for a gay-rights radio program in Beijing.

A year later, Chinese authorities accused Wan of promoting homosexuality and supporting prostitution, which led them to scale back the HIV/AIDS hotline and shut down "Men's World." Wan was fired in 1994 from his post at the National Health Education Institute.

"Unfortunately, his courage in speaking out against human rights abuses in China has placed him at great personal risk," said Mickey Spiegel, senior research in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, an independent, non-governmental organization in New York City.

Spiegel and other supporters worldwide said Wan's ongoing efforts to expose China's growing HIV/AIDS epidemic most likely led to his disappearance in Beijing two weeks ago after he helped coordinate a gay and lesbian film screening.

Xiao Qiang, a spokesperson for Human Rights in China, an advocacy organization in New York City, said Wan's wife has been unable to contact him and has not received any messages from him since the evening of Aug. 24. She wrote a letter asking the Beijing Public Security to help locate Wan but has not received a response, Qiang said.

Wan divides his time between China and California, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California in 1997.

The South China Morning Post reported Sept. 3 that Beijing police said they have no record of detaining Wan, according to his colleague, Hu Jia. Jia filed a missing person report with the Beijing Public Security Bureau Aug. 28.

Officials at China's embassy in Washington did not return a Blade call for comment.

Human Rights in China, an organization based in New York City, reported Aug. 27 that Wan's wife told them he vanished in Beijing while under close surveillance by security police. Wan's friends and family members said he most likely was detained because of his ongoing efforts to publicize China's growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

"Many health experts fear that the AIDS epidemic in China is developing into one of the worst in the world," said Spiegel at Human Rights Watch.

"It is only through the actions of people like Dr. Wan that there is any hope of dealing forthrightly with this public health and human rights disaster. "

The United Nations issued an 89-page report in late June highly critical of China's response to HIV/AIDS titled "HIV/AIDS: China's Titanic Peril."

The report in part warned that as many as 10 million people in China could be infected with HIV by 2010 if the epidemic is not curtailed.

Wan began in the mid-1990s coordinating a coalition of AIDS activists through the AIZHI Action Project, a Web-based initiative designed to offer HIV-prevention information in China at www.aizhi.org. The AIZHI Action Project led efforts in central China's Henan Province to expose the blood-collection techniques sanctioned by the government and used in the late 1980s to the mid 1990s that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being infected with HIV.

In Hong Kong on Monday, Sept. 2, about 20 human rights campaigners marched to the Beijing Liaison Office "demanding that the Chinese government investigate [Wan's] disappearance," the South China Morning Post reported.

A project officer for the Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese said security guards at the Liaison Office shut the gate and tore up the petition.

The San Francisco-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission distributed an e-mail action alert to various individuals and groups Monday noting that IGLHRC "is gravely concerned for Dr. Wan's safety, and the implications of this case for the freedom of both human rights and health advocates in China." The alert in part also said Amnesty International is "seriously concerned" for Wan's safety.

"We are all concerned and do not know what happened to him," said Sydney Levy, a spokesperson for IGLHRC. "We are waiting for the Chinese government to provide some answers."

News reporter Rhonda Smith can be reached at rsmith@washblade.com.

FOR MORE INFO International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission 1375 Sutter St., Suite 222 San Francisco, Calif. 94109 415-561-0633 www.iglhrc.org

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