A property developer in China reportedly hired a group of people with HIV to harass residents into leaving their homes, sparking anger from the country’s Internet users yesterday.
The case is the latest to highlight widespread discrimination in China against people living with HIV and AIDS.
It also underscores the unscrupulous lengths to which some real-estate firms and officials go to evict residents in a country where reselling land can provide big dividends for local governments.
Photo: AFP
“The obscene tactics of demolition teams emerge in innumerable succession,” one user of Sina Weibo wrote yesterday.
“The government departments definitely knew about this, they’re just pretending they didn’t,” another wrote.
According to a report late on Monday by state broadcaster China Central Television, a property developer in Nanyang hired six people with HIV in an effort to force local residents from a housing compound that was set for demolition.
Li Gejun, deputy head of the propaganda office in Wolong, a district of Nanyang, told CCTV that the Yi’an Real Estate Co hired the patients “in order to achieve its goal of speedy demolition.”
Footage by the broadcaster showed the words “AIDS demolition team” spray-painted in red on many of the compound’s walls.
The team also set off firecrackers, harassed residents and shot slingshots and ball bearings at their windows, according to Xinhua news agency.
Four officials have been reprimanded and five suspects held in connection with the case, Xinhua reported, adding that the housing compound had been “slated for demolition under a government plan.”
Forced demolition is a perennial source of discontent in China, where local governments can often earn enormous revenue by evicting people to clear land and then reselling it to developers.
The incident took place in Henan Province, which in the 1990s was hit by a debilitating AIDS epidemic that stemmed from a tainted government-backed blood donation program and infected tens of thousands of people.
It comes on the heels of reports earlier this month that Chinese villagers had targeted an eight-year-old HIV-positive boy for expulsion, drawing widespread condemnation.
About 200 residents — including the child’s own grandfather — signed a petition to expel the boy from their village in Sichuan Province to “protect villagers’ health.”
Discrimination against those with HIV/AIDS remains an issue at schools, hospitals, workplaces and other establishments across China, a factor that experts say hampers efforts to diagnose and treat it.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the