BEIJING, Nov 27, 2006 (AFP) - Leading Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai was freed Monday after police detained him for three days for trying to hold a public forum on the disease, his Beijing-based non-government group said.
Wan was taken away on Friday by police and forced to cancel the "Blood Safety, AIDS and Legal Human Rights Workshop," an activity linked with the December 1 World AIDS Day, the AIDS Action Project said in a statement.
The workshop was slated for Sunday and intended to gather about 50 people who had contracted HIV from unsafe blood transfusions in China.
Wan was detained by officials from the Beijing Public Security Bureau to "discuss" the workshop, the statement said. Phone calls by AFP to the security bureau went unanswered on Monday.
"In our future work we will actively seek the support and understanding of the government in an effort to avoid misunderstandings," it said.
"We also hope that concerned health departments will cherish the demands of several hundred thousand, or even over a million, ordinary people who acquired infectious diseases through blood transfusions."
The statement urged the government to offer such victims "compensation, subsidies, medicine and care."
The group also said an AIDS activist and three people who had contracted the disease through tainted blood transfusions were being held in Shanghai, apparently for trying to raise awareness about the problem.
Although the majority of China's estimated 650,000 HIV carriers are believed to be linked to high-risk groups such as drug users and sex workers, thousands have contracted the disease through transfusions involving tainted blood.
In the late 1990s, several villages in central China's Henan province were devastated by AIDS after locals got the disease through government-backed blood drives.
Victims of the scandal have protested loudly, although the government has failed to investigate those responsible and only slowly acknowledged the disaster, offering meager compensation.
China's health ministry said last week that 183,733 people were confirmed with HIV/AIDS at the end of October, reportedly a 27.5 percent rise from the end of last year.
The number of confirmed cases is significantly lower than the estimate of 650,000 put forward jointly by the government and United Nations health agencies.
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