The Hong Kong Diocese's justice and peace commission, the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students and a number of human rights groups petitioned the Chinese authorities to investigate the Aug. 24 disappearance of Wan Yanhai, 38, coordinator of the Aizhi (AIDS) Action Project in China, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.

Wan had been under heightened police surveillance for several months, human rights groups said. Police officials have not responded to requests for an investigation into his disappearance, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

Or Yan-yan, project officer for the justice and peace commission, said Sept. 2 that the liaison office of the Chinese government in Hong Kong refused to accept a petition from the group.

"The security guards threw the letter back each time the petitioners tried to place it inside the gate. Finally, they tore it," said Or, whose last contact with Wan was Aug. 23.

The justice and peace commission faxed the letter to the liaison office and the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, to which Wan's wife in the United States reported her husband's disappearance.

Wan, a Chinese national, was last seen late Aug. 24 while attending a film screening in a Beijing cafe. Witnesses say they saw plainclothes men communicating through walkie-talkies outside the eatery.

Or said sources in China suspect Wan was apprehended by the National Security Bureau because he previously disclosed a number of confidential documents belonging to the health department in Henan province.

Wan played a key role in exposing the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the province, where as many as 1 million people may have been infected as a result of unsafe blood collection practices, human rights groups said.

Or said Wan told him in June that Wan and his co-workers were under surveillance. Wan said that although Beijing authorities once approved his work, a planned meeting with officials in March was called off due to complaints from the Henan provincial government, which accused him of subversion.

Wan, a Fulbright visiting scholar, is the first recipient of the Awards for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, established this year by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. He was to travel to Canada in September to accept his award.

"Many health experts fear that the AIDS epidemic in China is developing into one of the worst in the world," said Mickey Spiegel, senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

"It is only through the actions of people like Dr. Wan that there is any hope of dealing forthrightly with this public health and human rights disaster. Unfortunately, his courage in speaking out against human rights abuses in China has placed him at great personal risk," Spiegel said.

In 1992 Wan established Beijing's HIV/AIDS hotline, a project of the Health Education Institute, but was criticized by the Ministry of Health in 1993 for advocating human rights and for his concern for homosexuals and prostitutes.

After he was expelled from his institute post in 1994 because of his work, Wan established the AIDS action project, which aims to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention in Chinese society, protect the rights of HIV/AIDS patients and support homosexuals' rights.

After a year as a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California in 1997, he continued his HIV/AIDS and education work internationally.

In July, Chinese authorities pressured the Beijing Modern Management College Department of Health and Anthropology, where the AIDS action project has an office, to expel Wan.

Wan is one of 18 intellectuals and dissidents who signed a "Declaration of the Rights of Internet Users" Aug. 1 to protest new Web site censorship rules imposed by the Chinese government.

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