A controversial policy of “tomb-flattening” in central China is destroying evidence of the AIDS epidemic, experts and activists say. Millions of peasants’ grave sites that surrounded villages where many died from the disease have been bulldozed flat in order to turn graveyards into farmland.
Data recently provided by local officials indicates that more than 2 million graves have been leveled since March, according to Shanghai Morning Post. Local authorities in Zhoukou City, Henan Province, claimed that turning graveyards into farmland will increase farmers’ income.
However, Dr. Gao Yaojie, one of China’s foremost AIDS experts, recently pointed out another reason the authorities have leveled so many tombs: to thoroughly destroy evidence of the AIDS epidemic in those areas.
“The deceased cannot talk. But the graves are their last testimonies that they contracted AIDS from selling their blood. This is how the tomb-removal campaign has come about after more than a decade,” she said in an article she wrote.
