Recently-released Chinese AIDS campaigner Wan Yanhai has been allowed to register his campaign group legally for the first time, he said, in an apparent relaxation by Beijing.
Wan, freed by Chinese authorities last month after being detained for four weeks on charges of allegedly leaking state secrets, has succeeded at getting the group listed as a legal non-governmental organization, he said late Thursday.
The group, now known as the Beijing AIDS Action Health Education Institute, rather than the AIDS Action Project as before, was allowed to register with the Beijing Industry and Commerce Bureau last week, he said.
It is an important step for Wan, who has faced months of harassment by authorities culminating in his detention, as China considers organizations that are not registered to be illegal.
Wan vowed to continue his work through the new institute, despite the fact that this resulted in his spending a month under arrest. Wan's detention prompted condemnation from many AIDS-related groups abroad.
The AIDS Action Project had been outspoken in pushing for the rights of farmers in the province of Henan in central China who contracted AIDS from selling blood from the mid-1980s.
Wan had criticized the government for not doing enough to address the problem and printed lists of farmers who died from AIDS on his group's Web site, as well as contacting overseas groups for help.
He said he would continue to publicize the problems of AIDS sufferers, including publishing lists of victims, even though the government might accuse him again of revealing state secrets.
"As far as I know, there's no law that says that type of information is state secrets," Wan said.
Although some changes would have to be made by the group so that it followed commerce bureau regulations, Wan added, its work would not change and would ultimately be aimed at improving the lives of AIDS sufferers.
He declined to comment on whether the government had become more tolerant of independent activists trying to halt the spread of AIDS or help AIDS sufferers.
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