July 8, 2003 Page A3

AIDS-Afflicted Villagers Say Chinese Police Attacked Them

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

BEIJING, July 7 — Hundreds of policemen raided an AIDS-afflicted village in central China two weeks ago, rampaging through homes, beating residents and arresting 13 people, villagers said. The nighttime attack, which left more than a dozen injured, was apparently in retaliation for the villagers' previous protests calling for better medical care, residents said in telephone interviews today.

The raid was the largest such clash between officials and residents in rural Henan Province, where AIDS is claiming growing numbers of lives and medical care is minimal.

Like many villages in Henan, Xiongqiao, where the raid took place on June 22, is experiencing an AIDS epidemic caused by government-induced blood trading in the 1990's. Experts estimate that there may be as many as a million H.I.V.-positive people in Henan, nearly all of them infected when they sold their blood under poorly protected conditions. Despite government promises, few of the villagers have been given antiviral drugs or specialized care.

About one-third of Xiongqiao's 600 or so residents are H.I.V.-positive; about 30 have died of AIDS, three residents of the village said in separate interviews. All feared reprisals if they gave their names.

The night of the raid, they said, officers wielding truncheons roamed the village in groups, swinging at villagers' heads and breaking television sets, dishes and lights. "They weren't like officials," one man said, "They behaved like bandits, smashing and looting." He added that about a dozen villagers had been injured, and that at least three were still hospitalized.

The villagers said they believed that the raid was in revenge for an earlier assault on local officials. On June 17 as many as 100 villagers went to the nearby Wulong Township government building to demand tax breaks and better treatment, including medicine coupons and the building of a health center, for which the central government had disbursed $6,000 a year ago.

When they were refused, several dozen protesters wrecked cars and assailed officials, including a deputy township chief, a villager who attended the protest said.

"Things got a bit out hand," he said. "But what else could we do? The money for the health clinic was issued a year ago, but where's our clinic? Where's our medicine?"

The raid in Xiongqiao is the most recent in a series of confrontations between villagers and officials in the Shangcai district. In May the police in the nearby village of Wenlou detained villagers who wanted to present their grievances to visiting World Health Organization officials. Over the past year there have been other, smaller protests in villages in Shangcai and other Henan districts, often involving demands for medicine and relief from fees and taxes.

Last month five Xiongqiao residents went to Henan's capital, Zhengzhou, to petition officials for the clinic and medicine. They were arrested, and four are still in detention. One was released because his AIDS symptoms were so severe, villagers said.

The Philadelphia-based AIDS Policy Project, which campaigns for greater access to AIDS treatment in developing countries, issued a call today for the release of the arrested villagers and also urged foreign companies to stop investing in Henan because of the province's poor treatment of H.I.V.-positive people.

The villagers of Xiongqiao said they had not previously been involved in violent confrontations. "Most of the time, we're too tired to protest," one of the men interviewed said, "and now we're scared that this isn't the end of it."