BEIJING, Aug 10 (AFP) - An AIDS activist who went missing in central China has been released, but a popular village doctor was arrested for handing out too much medicine to sufferers, a Beijing-based group said Tuesday.
Activist Li Dan and a colleague were arrested as they prepared to join demonstrators in Shuangmiao, one of China's infamous AIDS villages in the central province of Henan.
After being locked up in a hotel in Shangqiu city on Sunday, Li's colleague was released, but Li was held against his will until Monday, according to the AIZHIXING Institute of Health Education.
When he was freed, he went to an Internet cafe to inform other activists about what happened.
As he left, he was accosted by several men believed sent by local officials who repeatedly punched and kicked him, according to a statement Li posted on the Institute's website.
Uniformed police later took him into custody along with one of the attackers only to release him several hours later.
"He's contacted his family to inform them he's been released," Wan Yanhai, director of the Institute told AFP, adding that Li suffered wounds to his shoulder.
During the ordeal, Li's mobile phone was taken from him and he could not be reached Tuesday.
An official at the Zhecheng county police station refused to comment, but admitted: "He (Li) may have been by in the last two days."
Also in Shuangmiao village, Zhu Longhua, a doctor in the local clinic who ignored official limits for medicine for HIV/AIDS patients, was arrested Sunday, said Wan and a villager who requested anonymity.
"He's a very popular doctor because he cared about patients and the quantity of medicine he prescribed was effective. But the county pharmacy said he gave away too much medicine," said the villager.
The quantity stipulated by the county was insufficient to treat the patients' AIDS-related illnesses, said the villager, who had been treated by Zhu.
Some 400 people from the village's population of 3,000 are HIV positive. They contracted the virus from selling blood in government-backed schemes in the 1990s that have caused a major epidemic in China's countryside.
County police refused to comment.
The incidents are the latest example of the harsh tactics that are still used to discourage the activities of independent AIDS activists and others, despite China's leaders pledging to openly deal with the epidemic.
In provinces such as Henan, where farming communities have been devastated by AIDS, officials have stormed villages at night, beating and arresting HIV-infected farmers demanding better care.
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