China bans student-founded AIDS group

BEIJING, Oct 19 (Reuters) China has banned an unregistered non-governmental AIDS group founded by university students in the far western region of Xinjiang, an activist and a lawyer said today.

The ''Snow Lotus'' AIDS education group, which had over 200 mainly university student volunteers, was closed down yesterday by the local government for not having registered with them, activist Chang Kun told Reuters.

''They banned our organisation and sealed up all our desks and work materials in the office,'' Chang, a 21-year-old university student, said by telephone.

''They also threatened me by saying that if I did not follow their instructions, I would be detained,'' he said.

The Xinjiang government was not immediately available for comment.

China, which the Communists have run as a one-party state since 1949, is wary of groups it cannot directly control.

But China does tolerate many independent AIDS groups.

The crackdown came days after the organisation broke the news that a middle school in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi had expelled 19 students because they had hepatitis B.

''We suspect that this is the real reason the organisation was banned,'' said Li Fangping, a lawyer who is helping Chang.

HIV/AIDS became a major headache for China in the 1980s and 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

An estimated 650,000 people are living with HIV-AIDS in China.

Reuters PB GC1751