Police remove Chinese AIDS activist from Beijing

By Lucy Hornby

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese woman with HIV was forced back to her home province after ceremonies in Beijing marking World AIDS Day, the second incident in a week in which local officials sought to quiet unflattering exposure about AIDS.

Li Xige, who had taken part in AIDS awareness activities in the capital since late November, said she was escorted to her home in central Henan province on Tuesday, a day after World AIDS Day, and warned to stop talking or she would end up in jail.

Henan was at the centre of Chinese AIDS infections in the 1990s, when reckless blood-buying schemes and a lack of testing allowed the virus to spread to recipients of blood transfusions.

Five officials from her home Ningling county were now preventing her from leaving her home, she said by telephone from her home.

Li contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1995 and passed it to her daughters, one of whom has died of AIDS. She had previously been under house arrest for over two years because of her outspoken search for redress.

She said she went to Beijing to seek compensation and judicial action.

"I want them to take responsibility for not having told me for so many years that I had this... I've been from government offices to court to government offices again, bounced about like a ball," she told Reuters.

Discontented HIV sufferers have embarrassed the Henan government, which has often sought to block media coverage of the issue.