China Continues to Crack Down on HIV/AIDS Web Sites and Activists

June 25, 2008

Chinese authorities have made significant progress in their efforts to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS since 2003, but at the same time continue to harass HIV/AIDS advocates. Authorities reportedly ordered the closure of the "AIDS Museum" Web site, www.aidsmuseum.cn, according its founder, Chang Kun, in a May 7 Radio Free Asia interview.

Chinese authorities have made significant progress in their efforts to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS since 2003, but at the same time continue to harass HIV/AIDS advocates. Authorities reportedly ordered the closure of the "AIDS Museum" Web site, www.aidsmuseum.cn, according its founder, Chang Kun, in a May 7 Radio Free Asia interview. Chang, an HIV/AIDS activist, said he received a phone call on May 6 from the site's Internet Service Provider (ISP) saying that the local public security bureau's Internet surveillance division reportedly ordered the site closed because it contained information about "firearms and ammunition."

Shaanxi province officials reportedly shut down another Web site, AIDS Wikipedia, also founded by Chang from February 20 to March 12, according to a Radio Free Asia interview on February 22 reported in The Epoch Times and Chang's personal Web page. In the interview, Chang said the closure by the local public security bureau's Internet surveillance division was due to his article about farmland confiscation in Anhui province.

The closure of Chang's Web sites follows other instances over the past year where officials harassed HIV/AIDS activists and curbed their online activities. These include:

  • Police reportedly harassed HIV/AIDS activist Wan Yanhai according to a May 27 USA Today report. Wan said he was put under 24-hour police surveillance for four days and the police followed his every move. Several other human rights activists reportedly had similar experience during the same time according to an Associated Press (AP) report (via International Herald Tribune). The crackdown took place during the weekend before the latest round of the Sino-U.S. human rights dialogue according to a May 27 press release by Human Rights in China.
  • Public security officials sentenced HIV/AIDS activist Hu Jia to three years and six months in prison for "inciting subversion of state power" on April 3. See CECC's news and analysis about Hu Jia's detention, formal arrest, trial, and sentence.
  • On March 5, Boxun reported that Beijing public security bureau's Internet surveillance division informed Beijing Aizhixing Institute (via Aizhixing's ISP) to remove illegal information, specifically sensitive information about HIV/AIDS. The illegal information was an Aizhixing statement on HIV/AIDS advocate Hu Jia's disappearance two years ago. Officials subsequently closed the Web site, with people in the Beijing area unable to access the site.
  • Officials banned a conference scheduled for early August 2007 in Guangzhou on the legal rights of those infected with HIV. The conference would have brought together fifty Chinese and international HIV/AIDS activists and experts. In a July 29, 2007, Radio Free Asia article, one of the conference organizers, the New York-based Asia Catalyst, suggested that authorities cancelled the conference because the subject matter and the involvement of foreigners were "too sensitive."
  • Leading HIV/AIDS experts and advocates from around the world submitted an open letter dated September 27, 2007, to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) expressing concern over Chinese government actions against the AIDS work of Chinese NGOs and advocates, including Li Dan. State security officials held Li, founder of the China Orchid AIDS Project and winner of the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award, in custody in Beijing for 24 hours on July 27, 2007. The China Orchid AIDS Project was the co-organizer of the cancelled conference in August.

For more information on HIV/AIDS in China, see pages 117-118 and 127-129 of the CECC's 2007 Annual Report.