You're in: AIDS at 25 Coverage / Re-Visiting Wan Yanhai
Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai, who co-founded Aizhi, a Beijing-based AIDS advocacy group, and says his AIDS work cost him his job as a health researcher and landed him on a government blacklist. AP Photo/Greg Baker
In 2003 Seed spoke with Wan Yanhai, China's "most important AIDS activist," who had recently been released from prison for questioning the government's strategy for dealing with AIDS. Last month Mara Hvistendahl, our China correspondent, caught up with Yanhai to see what, if anything, has changed since then.
When you talked to Seed in 2002 you had just been released from detention. Maybe this is too big of a question, but how have things changed since then?
Good question. No change. Our government still controls everything.
How has AIDS activism changed since then?
AIDS activists are still being detained everywhere in China.
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But there are more of them now. Has it become easier to—
There are more activists working on this issue, but there are more activists being detained. So you can see some good stories and some bad stories. The good story is more activists started to work on this area. The bad story is more activists are being detained. They are detained and released, detained and released.
So more activists means there are more people to be detained.
Yes, yes.
How about yourself though?
Myself, I am still free. I am very angry with our government right now. I'm thinking I'll be detained sometime.
It's horrible right now. Four years have passed and they want to show the international community that they are much better. But the evidence is that it's still a closed government; it's still lying, still ignoring the voice of the people, and still putting activists in detention. It's a closed government.
"If you don't criticize them, they smile a really beautiful smile. But if you want to talk with them seriously, then you are an enemy of the nation."
How has the government's stance with regard to AIDS changed, though? They have started to admit that it's more of a problem. At one point they didn't admit it was a problem.
Now they acknowledge it's a problem, but they want to say that the problem is [being handled] quite well. Four years ago they lied to the world that there is no such problem. Now they lie to the world that the problem is being handled quite well. It's the same attitude of lying.
Is government acknowledgement of the problem partly a desire to get funding?
Now the government receives more funding from the international global community, but the government is not transparent. They don't take responsibility for what they do, and we don't know where the money goes.
Has more money been coming in to your organization?
More money comes to our organization and more attention comes to our organization from the government. So it's good and bad.
There is funding coming from the government, though.
[No,] almost none. We received one small grant two years ago from the government. But I think we spend much more money because sometimes they make trouble for people, so when we handle that issue we spend more money [in order to get detainees out of jail].
You mentioned in the last interview that you were working with the Beijing Municipal Health Department on a project.
Yes, some projects, some relationships, but not strong. Yesterday, in the office of the Chinese CDC a government official condemned me for receiving funding from foreigners and helping foreigners, [saying] that's not fair to the Chinese people.
He said you should you shouldn't be receiving funding from foreigners?
He didn't say that. He just said, you receive funding from foreigners and help foreigners. You are not serving the Chinese people.