Motionsickmag.com
Missing Chinese AIDS Activist Found:Posted By: Martha Buffett By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer BEIJING - A prominent Chinese AIDS activist who disappeared after staging a hunger strike to protest violence against dissidents has returned home from what he claimed was a six-week ordeal in police custody, his wife said Wednesday.Hu Jia was held at an unspecified location by police from his local Tongzhou Police Station in eastern Beijing and came back "weak and possibly suffering from kidney damage" as a result of not getting regular medicine to treat his hepatitis B, his wife Zeng Jinyan said. Zeng did not give any details on why Hu was held but said no charges were filed against him. Hu, one of China's most prominent AIDS activists, came home Tuesday afternoon and went to the hospital Wednesday morning, Zeng said. He did not want to talk to reporters, she said. "He called me first to tell me he was coming home, but I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe it was real," Zeng said. "Now, I am so happy, I feel like I can breathe again but I am afraid, too, that his health might have been irreversibly damaged." A man who answered the phone at the police station in Tongzhou said he had no information about Hu and told a reporter to submit a detailed inquiry letter. He refused to give his name. Zeng had filed several missing person reports with local- and municipal-level police officials since Hu went missing Feb. 16 and never received a response. "The police who repeatedly denied knowing where he was had him the whole time," Zeng said in a telephone interview. Hu, 32, was under house arrest when he disappeared a few days after joining activists in the hunger strike. At least six people who participated in the hunger strike or had ties to its organizer — outspoken Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng — have been detained or gone missing in recent months, according to Gao. Among those still in custody is Wu Hao, a documentary filmmaker who had met several times with Gao. He has apparently been in police custody since Feb. 22. Wu's sister, Wu Na, said Wednesday that Beijing police recently told her they could not release any details about her brother's case because it was "secret." The U.N. AIDS agency and the U.N. Human Rights Commission had expressed concern to the Chinese government about Hu's fate. In 2004, Hu said he was placed under house arrest to prevent him from traveling to a village in the central province of Henan with a high incidence of AIDS while a U.S. Embassy delegation was visiting. Courtesy Of: Yahoo! News The information reported above is property of Yahoo! inc. and reprinted or modified with legitimate permission. We thank Yahoo! inc. for the kind cooperation with us and other shareholders. |
|
Bookmark | Contact Us | Search
Copyright ©2005-2006 MAS Network