Chinese AIDS Activist Missing

BEIJING — A veteran Chinese AIDS activist and onetime visiting scholar at USC is reportedly missing, prompting fears that he may have been arrested.

Wan Yanhai, also a gay rights activist, was last seen by his friends Saturday night at a movie screening here in the Chinese capital. The event, which featured a gay-themed film, was also attended by plainclothes police, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Wednesday.

Wan has been well known in the AIDS-prevention effort in China for nearly a decade. He ran afoul of the Chinese government in the early 1990s after he established an AIDS hotline. He left the country shortly thereafter.

In 1997, Wan was a visiting scholar at USC. He since has divided his time between China and Los Angeles and has run a Chinese-language Web site on AIDS awareness and prevention. Wan recently helped publicize the plight of villages in central China ravaged by AIDS, a sensitive story the government has tried to censor.