Rough Treatment

-#include virtual="/time/asia/magazine/2003/0721/thisweek.txt"-->Since taking office in March, China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have cultivated an image of baby-cuddling folksiness. Hu's and Wen's breaking of bread with peasants during official outings—not to mention eventually coming clean on SARS—are seen by some as evidence of the emergence of a new breed of Chinese leader.

But to the residents of AIDS-stricken Wenlou village in central Henan province, China's authorities seem considerably less paternal. As many as 60% of the locals are HIV positive, infected when they sold blood under unsanitary conditions in the 1990s. Most are too poor to afford even basic medicine needed for the host of small infections the virus brings, let alone the costly antiretroviral drugs just now becoming available in Chinese cities. Victims are treated in makeshift infirmaries lacking basic medical gear.

As more villagers are ravaged by full-blown AIDS, they have begun demanding relief from the state. Last month, a handful of Wenlou victims had faith enough in their leaders' benevolence to travel to the provincial capital of Zhengzhou. Their goal was to convince health officials to help them set up organized care for children orphaned by AIDS.

Instead, the supplicants only brought more suffering down on their own heads. When they reached Zhengzhou, several were detained by local police, says a Wenlou resident and AIDS victim who asks to be identified only by his surname, Cheng. Worse, authorities then tried to scare the village's 3,000 residents into silence. On the night of June 22, Cheng says, he and his children awoke to the sound of splitting wood. He says hundreds of police stormed Wenlou, breaking down doors, attacking villagers with cattle prods and dragging some out of their beds and into police cars. The ordeal was repeated the next night, says Cheng. In all, about 100 people were taken away. "These attacks were so sudden," Cheng says with bewilderment. "All we were trying to do was to answer the question of what will happen to the children when the adults die. Can you really say that's an unreasonable demand?"

This was the third such crackdown in the Wenlou area in just over a month. Although the government is still embarrassed by the AIDS crisis in the province, it's unlikely the raids were ordered by Beijing. Local police "probably acted out of a long-ingrained habit of using any means possible to suppress information," says Hu Jia, a Beijing-based AIDS activist. That's not explanation enough for Cheng. "I have two small children," he says. "How am I supposed to make them understand why this is happening?"