Chinese Aids activists visit Hong Kong to press Beijing for compensation

Several Aids sufferers from Henan province visiting Hong Kong yesterday urged mainland authorities to compensate them and provide free medical treatment for their illnesses linked to HIV infection.

Among them were Tian Xi, 26, who contracted HIV and hepatitis B and C from a tainted blood transfusion when he was nine years old, and a 43-year-old woman Aids patient surnamed Hu and her HIV-infected 10-year-old daughter, who is half-paralysed and unable to speak due to a brain disease possibly related to her infection.

Tian, who was jailed for a year and sent to illegal detention centres known as "black jails" several times for protesting against the lack of compensation, said that a Ministry of Health official had promised to grant him 150,000 yuan (HK$188,700) in compensation last year but he never received the money.

Tian, who has lobbied the government since he tested HIV-positive 10 years ago, said his communications were monitored by police in Beijing, where he now lives. Whenever he returned to his native Xincai county in Henan, he was harassed and subjected to house arrest.

"By cracking down on me, they want to suppress Aids activism," he said. He suffered from a skin disease affecting his whole body as a result of Aids, he said.

Hu, whose husband and eight-year-old son died in 2011 and 2010, said her children used to be healthy and active like other children until they fell ill. Her husband contracted HIV through blood transfusion in 1995 before they were married and he unknowingly infected his wife and their babies through mother-to-child transmission.

"My daughter used to dance, ice-skate and draw pictures … I just hope she'll have a chance to live like a normal human being again," Hu said tearfully behind a white mask. She did not want to be identified out of fear of government reprisals.