Chinese AIDS activist missing for six weeks returns home

A Chinese AIDS activist who disappeared after staging a hunger strike has returned home after what he claims was a six-week ordeal in police custody, his wife said Wednesday.

Photo: Chinese AIDS activist missing for six weeks returns home

Hu Jia was held at an unspecified location by police from his local Tongzhou police station in eastern Beijing and came back "weak and possibly suffering from kidney damage" as a result of not getting regular medicine to treat his hepatitis B, his wife Zeng Jinyan said.

Zeng did not say why Hu was held but she said no charges were filed against him.

A man who answered the phone at the Tongzhou police station said he had no information about anyone named Hu Jia and told a reporter to submit a detailed inquiry letter. He refused to give his name.

Hu, one of China's most prominent AIDS activists, returned home Tuesday afternoon and went to the hospital on Wednesday morning because he felt weak, Zeng said. He did not want to talk to reporters, she said.

"He called me first to tell me he was coming home, but I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe it was real," Zeng said in a telephone interview. "Now, I am so happy, I feel like I can breathe again but I am afraid too that his health might have been irreversibly damaged."

Zeng filed several missing person's reports with local and municipal-level police officials after Hu went missing Feb. 16 but never received a response, she said.

"The police, who repeatedly denied knowing where he was, had him the whole time," Zeng said, reports the AP.

I.L.