China ministry says didn't know AIDS doctor banned

BEIJING, Feb 6 (Reuters) China's Foreign Ministry said today it knew nothing of claims that an aging advocate for AIDS sufferers has been blocked from visiting the United States, saying local officials may know about the case.

Friends of Gao Yaojie, an octogenarian doctor instrumental in exposing China's long-concealed rural AIDS crisis, have said she was put under house arrest in Zhengzhou, capital of the central province of Henan, to prevent her from collecting an award from a U.S. group.

Hu Jia, a Beijing-based rights activist, said police had forced Gao to miss her Sunday flight to Beijing to apply for her visa. The U.S. Embassy in the Chinese capital has raised the case with the Foreign Ministry.

But ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said she knew nothing of Gao's case.

''I haven't heard of that. That's information gathered locally and we haven't received it,'' she said when asked if Gao had indeed been confined to her own home. ''You can inquire with the local government.'' Jiang said China was ''a country with a system of law and everyone is equal before the law.'' Officials in Zhengzhou have refused to answer reporters' questions about Gao, who is well-known in China and received warm media coverage here until her unflinching criticisms of official complicity and apathy became too much.

Gao was among the first to expose Henan's blood scandal in which millions sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run health clinics, making the province the center of China's AIDS epidemic.

Gao had been invited to the Vital Voices annual awards in Washington in March where she was to be honored for her work, according to an invitation letter from the group, supported by US Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, forwarded by Hu.

''We are concerned by reports of the detention of Dr Gao Yaojie.

The US Embassy in Beijing has raised our concerns with the Chinese foreign ministry and urged that the Chinese government take steps to allow Gao to travel freely,'' said US State Department spokeswoman Leslie Phillips.

''We applaud Dr Gao's efforts both to highlight the plight of those living with HIV/AIDS in China and ... to address their needs.

We urge the Chinese government to support such efforts to respond to China's growing HIV/AIDS epidemic as well as those seeking to help their fellow citizens,'' Phillips added.

In 2001, Gao was barred from leaving the country to collect the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Two years later, authorities prevented her from going abroad to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service.

REUTERS PDM PM2323