On 11 February 2011, human rights defender Mr Tian Xi was sentenced by Xincai County People's Court in Henan province to one year's imprisonment for 'destroying public property'.

Further Information

Tian Xi is an HIV/AIDS activist who contracted the virus, along with Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, following a blood transfusion at the People's No. 1 Hospital in Xincai, in 1996, when he was nine years old. As Tian Xi has been detained in police custody since August 2010, he is due to be released in August 2011. It is reported that he intends to appeal his sentencing.

According to his lawyer, Mr Liang Xiaojun, Tian Xi appeared weak in court and is being held in an unheated cell in Shangcai County Detention Centre together with six other prisoners with HIV or AIDS.

In late July 2010, Tian Xi was asked by the Xincai Communist Party Secretary to return to the County from Beijing, where he had been advocating on behalf of individuals infected with HIV by contaminated blood from State-sponsored blood sales and hospital transfusions in the 1990s.

The Party Secretary had reportedly promised Tian Xi that his own case for compensation would be resolved if he returned.