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Villagers appended thumbprint on " joint letter
", with the Kun Kun watching carefully. (Photo: Chenyong Bin) (村民正在“联名信”上签字按手印，坤坤在仔细的看着。（陈永斌摄）Source:
People’s Daily
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The plight of an eight-year-old Chinese boy with HIV,
reportedly ordered to leave his village by 200 petitioners, sparked intense
online soul-searching Thursday in a country where discrimination against
sufferers remains rife.
Media (Peoples' Daily/CNN/AFP) reports claim the boy's guardian, his grandfather, was among those
in southwestern Sichuan province who signed an agreement to expel the child to
"protect villagers' health", the Global Times reported.
The newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling
Communist Party, said the boy contracted the virus from his mother.
The case has highlighted the stigma attached to the
disease in China, where many sufferers face widespread discrimination.
Previous reports said the boy -- who was given the
pseudonym Kun kun by Chinese media -- was refused admission to local schools and
villagers would avoid contact with him.
"Nobody plays (with me), I play alone,"
Kun kun said, according to a report Wednesday on the website of the People's
Daily newspaper.
The website also said Kun kun was referred to as a
"time bomb" in the petition.
"The villagers sympathise with him, he is
innocent, and only a small child. But his AIDS is too scary for us," Wang
Yishu, party chief of Shufangya village, told the website.
The Global Times said the boy's mother left the family
in 2006, while his father "lost contact" after Kun kun's condition was
diagnosed.
Kun kun sneaked into a specially-convened meeting held
earlier this month by villagers to discuss how they would banish him, the
report added.
- 'Ignorance
and panic' -
High ranking officials from the township government
said "legally speaking" the boy could not be expelled, and that he
has the same rights as other villagers, the newspaper said.
"Officials plan to visit the village and speak
with the villagers", it added, while the People's Daily website said
"ideological work" would be carried out in the village. It was
unclear late Thursday whether Kun kun was still in his village.
The case has sparked much debate on China's
Twitter-like Sina Weibo, where it was the most widely-discussed topic early
Thursday, with many asking how people could be so cold-hearted towards the
child.
"Why was he ruthlessly neglected, it is so unfair
to him," said a post by one user.
"This is because the Chinese population cannot
get enough education, causing ignorance and panic," said another.
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A group of Chinese
college students are seen promoting AIDS awareness, during a World AIDS Day campaign
in Liaocheng, Shandong province, on December 1, 2013 ©- (AFP)
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Figures released earlier this month by China's
National Health and Family Planning Commission showed that a total of 497,000
people in China have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS since the country's first
case in 1985. China has a population of 1.36 billion.
Discrimination against those with the virus remains an
issue at schools, hospitals, workplaces and other establishments across the
country, a factor that experts say hampers efforts to diagnose and treat it.
Knowledge of HIV/AIDS in worse in poor, rural areas,
such as the community Kun kun is from, experts say.
Attempts by authorities to educate these populations
about discrimination often fail, a campaigner who would only give his surname
as Tang told AFP.
"The publicity campaign is not strong enough to
reach the rural areas and villages and that’s why there is more discrimination
there," said Tang, a community coordinator at the Kunming office of AIDS
advocacy group Aizhixing.
"Personally I don’t think such situations would
exist in cities," Tang added. "People in rural areas know little
about civil rights and they have a poor sense of the disease.
"We
will continue using our network to speak out, meanwhile we hope the government
could do more as well."
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