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Chinese AIDS activist gets one-year
prison sentence
¡¥INJUSTICE¡¦:Tian Xi questioned the court¡¦s decision to
punish him for damaging hospital equipment, while failing to penalize it for
infecting him with the HIV virus
AP, BEIJING
A Chinese AIDS activist has been sentenced to a year in prison for smashing
equipment at the hospital where he was infected, his lawyer said yesterday.
Tian Xi (¥Ð³ß) plans to appeal the punishment, handed down a day earlier at Xincai
County People¡¦s Court, Henan Province, after he was convicted of intentionally
damaging property, his lawyer Liang Xiaojun (±ç¤px) said.
¡§Tian told the court it did not consider the links between the cause and effect,
and only punished him and not the hospital,¡¨ Liang said.
Phones in several offices at Xincai County No. 1 People¡¦s Hospital and the court
rang unanswered yesterday.
Police took Tian into custody in August after a run-in with an administrator at
the hospital, where he had been given a tainted blood transfusion as a boy.
Tian lost his temper and smashed office equipment after the official said there
was nothing he could do about Tian¡¦s case and walked out of their meeting,
Tian¡¦s father has said.
The 24-year-old has petitioned for compensation for years and has been outspoken
in his advocacy for others who have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS,
through tainted blood supplies.
After ignoring or demonizing people with AIDS for much of the 1980s and 1990s,
China¡¦s authoritarian government has taken a more compassionate line on the
disease and combating its spread in recent years. However, people with AIDS
still face difficulties in getting treatment and compensation, and authorities
remain deeply suspicious of independent activists.
Liang said Tian was physically weak at his court appearance on Friday and was
still recovering from a serious cold. Tian is being held an unheated cell at the
Shangcai County Detention Center along with a half-dozen other inmates with HIV
or AIDS, Liang said.
Infected inmates are more common in Henan owing to unregulated blood-buying
schemes there in the mid-1990s that contaminated blood supplies.
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