HIV patients hired to ‘intimidate’ people out of homes in Henan province
Henan developer arrested and accused of paying infected people to intimidate residents into relocating to make way for real estate project
PUBLISHED : Friday, 26 December, 2014, 2:04pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 27 December, 2014, 1:31am
He Huifeng and Li Jing
A building in Nanyang with "AIDS demolition team" daubed on the walls. Photo: SCMP Pictures
A man has been detained in Nanyang , Henan province, for allegedly hiring six HIV carriers to intimidate residents into moving out to make way for a real estate project.
More than 10 households left the residential community in Wolong district after the group left threatening messages on building walls, yelled at residents and set off firecrackers at night, The Beijing News reported.
The HIV carriers told residents that the developer had paid them a total of 300,000 yuan (HK$378,000) to force the residents to move out, and that they used the money for medical treatment, the newspaper said.
The city government said on its website that it had launched an investigation into the matter and that the company in charge of demolishing the area had been told to stop work.
It stressed that the Wolong district government was not responsible for hiring the HIV carriers or the intimidation of the residents.
But a commentary posted on Xinhua's website said the local government could not be absolved because it had played a major role in pushing the relocation and demolition programmes.
The district government wanted to relocate the residential community as part of a project to "renovate urban villages" - meaning that they wanted to demolish villages on the outskirts of cities that were surrounded by more modern buildings.
"Local governments were behind most of the bloody demolition incidents that have occurred in recent years," the Xinhua commentary said.
"They would commission the relocation work to private companies or real estate developers, who would then hire hooligans to force the residents to move out … How can the local government then say that it has nothing to do with the case?"
This was not the first time that HIV carriers in Henan had been hired to intimidate people, local police said. A separate Beijing News report said the practice had been widespread in the province for about a decade.
Henan was hard hit by an Aids epidemic in the 1990s, when villagers from poor rural communities in the province contracted the disease after they took part in blood-selling schemes.
Such patients were hired to collect debts or for extortion in Henan and elsewhere, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. They were paid a few hundred yuan a day for their services.
A policeman in Nanyang, who did not want to be identified, said the carriers would show their victims blood-filled syringes and medical documents certifying them as HIV-positive.
He said it was difficult for the public security authorities to deal with HIV and Aids patients even if they were convicted of crimes because there were no special facilities to house such people if they were jailed.
