Since mid-February, Chinese authorities have detained over a dozen prominentparticipants in an innovative relay hunger strike that was organized to protest abuses against Chinese rights defenders. Participants, including well-known AIDS activist Hu Jia, agreed to fast for a day each inturn. As each person announces his or her plans to take part in the hunger strike, they have been detained.

"China is not only jailing activists, but also the attorneys who defend them," said Sara (Meg) Davis, co-founder of the China AIDS Solidarity Network. "China must release all the hunger strikers immediately."

Some activists have simply disappeared, and police have refused to release information to their families about their whereabouts. Many participants posted photographs of themselves on the internet fasting in a "virtual" grassroots protest.

Groups signing on to the protest letter include Human Rights Watch, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, AIDS Policy Project, Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group, the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association, and China Labor Watch. Health and development groups from Europe, Africa and Mexico have also signed on.Leading China scholars, including Professors Theodore De Bary, Jerome Cohen (NYU), Andrew Nathan (Columbia University), and Perry Link (Princeton) have also lent their names.

Said Kate Krauss, co-founder of the China AIDS Solidarity Network, "The Chinese government continues to intimidate, beat, and imprison many of its leading lights: Its smartest AIDS experts, its best lawyers. But the practice of rounding up and detaining everyone who disagrees with you cannot be the longterm strategy of a stable country, a world leader."

There are a total of 122 signatures so far. The letter can be viewed and signedat www.aidspolicyproject.org. A copy of the letter and the full list of signatures is attached.

The China AIDS Solidarity Network is a coalition of AIDS and human rightsgroups, international public health experts and scholars. CASN does advocacy and solidarity work with independent Chinese AIDS activists. The coalition was founded in New York in 2002 in response to the imprisonment of a prominentChinese AIDS activist.

Contacts: Sara (Meg) Davis, (English or Chinese), cell phone +1-347-210-8544

Kate Krauss, (English), cell phone +1-215-939-7852 (boxun.com)