China’s most well-known AIDS activist has been arrested and jailed, charged with revealing state secrets.
AIDS Action Project head Wan Yanhai faces prosecution for widely e-mailing a leaked government report on thousands of farmers in Henan province who were infected with HIV after selling their blood to unsanitary, government-sanctioned blood collectors in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.
Wan has said up to 2 million people may have been infected in similar circumstances.
“What my husband did is good for his country, his people and AIDS prevention in China,” Wan’s wife, Ivy Su, said Sept. 5. “He is a very intelligent, rational scholar. I believe that in the fight against AIDS, the government is not enough. NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and volunteers and community-level work cannot be ignored.”