Word: wenlou
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...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...
...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...
...country that often treats truth as a state secret, the 33-year-old cameraman relies as much on stealth as stagecraft. For his 2002 documentary, To Live is Better Than To Die, a stark portrayal of a family destroyed by AIDS, he sneaked into the village of Wenlou in central Henan province dressed as a peasant, creeping through cornfields in the dead of night with his equipment stashed in a fertilizer bag. That was the only way he could elude police in order to film the effects of one of the mainland's biggest health scandals: the transmission...
...From the moment he had those tapes back in his hands, Chen says he felt determined to document the crisis in Wenlou. "The more trouble they gave me," he recalls, "the more I knew I couldn't let the project drop." Obstinacy has its rewards. In February, the documentary was screened at the U.S. Sundance Film Festival, where Chen received standing ovations and purchase offers from HBO. Despite the accolades, Chen fears the film may cost him his job. Just before he left town to attend the festival, he says he received a phone call from a local official telling...