Agence France Presse (08.19.03) - Tuesday, August 19, 2003
A prominent health official in China's AIDS-stricken Henan
province has been arrested for allegedly leaking secret
documents related to the infection of tens of thousands of
villagers through blood transfusions, an AIDS activist said
Tuesday. Ma Shiwen, deputy director of the Henan Centers for
Disease Control, was arrested for providing documents on the
Henan epidemic to the nongovernmental AIDS activist
organization Aizhi Action Group, said the group's director Wan
Yanhai.
"According to health officials in Henan, Ma Shiwen was
arrested in recent days and is being charged with leaking
state secrets," reported Wan, who is in the United States as a
visiting scholar. "It's possible that the secrets leaked
concerned official documents that were anonymously sent to
[AAG] on August 24 last year and which revealed the extent of
the AIDS outbreak in Henan," he continued.
Wan was also charged with leaking state secrets days after he
received the documents and posted them on AAG's Web site. Wan
was released a month later following an international outcry
and after police confirmed that the documents were anonymously
sent to the group.
"As far as I know, Ma Shiwen has not been formally sacked, he
is still deputy director of the section, he has just
disappeared," said a colleague at the Henan CDC, who refused
to identify himself. Other officials at Henan's health bureau
refused to comment when contacted.
In August 2002, the government announced that about 1 million
Chinese were HIV-positive with a significant percentage in
Henan, and warned the figure could increase tenfold before the
end of the decade. China's new openness about the Henan
epidemic has come as growing numbers of those affected have
become increasingly vocal about the government's role in the
epidemic and dissatisfied over insufficient services and
medications in rural areas.