BEIJING, Aug 10 (AFP) - Beijing's hotels and schools have turned away a group of 71 "AIDS orphans" who came to the Chinese capital for a five-day summer camp, state media said Tuesday, blasting the move as discriminatory.
Some 40 schools, hotels and rest houses refused to offer lodgings to the children, whose parent or parents died from AIDS after selling blood in unhygienic blood collection stations in central China.
The children are not infected, but the schools and hotels worried that their students or guests would feel uncomfortable knowing that their facilities had been used by AIDS orphans, the official China Daily said.
"These justifications are illogical and heartbreaking," the newspaper said in an editorial.
A hotel far from the city center, in the western outskirts of Beijing, later accepted the children, the report said.
The snub comes despite the central government's pledge to fight discrimination against the country's growing population of HIV/AIDS patients, who officially number 840,000 carriers. The true figure is believed to be much higher.
A key reason for the strong prejudice against patients as well as their relatives is that most Chinese have an insufficient and often incorrect understanding of AIDS.
According to a recent survey, only 8.7 percent of Chinese people are fully aware of how HIV is transmitted.
Some 25 percent of rural residents have never even heard of the virus, according to the survey conducted by Futures Group Europe and Beijing-based Horizon Research Group.
The survey also found that few people express caring attitudes and acceptance for those infected by HIV or living with AIDS.
Only 33.9 percent of urban residents and 19 percent of town residents think that HIV carriers should be allowed to continue working.
"There is still a lot more for the public to learn about HIV/AIDS," the newspaper said.
The summer camp was organized by AIDS activists and volunteers partly to raise awareness about the plight of the orphans, many of whom are left to fend for themselves with no help from the government.
Their parents sold blood to earn money, often to build their homes or pay their school tuition. The blood was pooled and reinjected into sellers after the plasma was extracted, causing large scale infections.
For many of the children, it is their first time in Beijing.
Some of them are hoping to find adoptive parents while in the capital.
The children will be taken to the Great Wall, Forbidden City as well as a science museum where they will meet China's first astronaut Yang Liwei.
The United Nations has warned China's HIV/AIDS cases could skyrocket to 10 million by the end of the decade.
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