Chinese AIDS activist under house arrest allowed to travel to US - Yahoo! News

Chinese AIDS activist under house arrest allowed to travel to US - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AFP) - China has allowed a high-profile AIDS campaigner under house arrest to travel to the United States to receive an award following Chinese President Hu Jintao's intervention, US Senator Hillary Clinton said. Clinton had written to Hu and Vice Premier Wu Yi to allow Gao Yaojie to come to Washington to receive the award next month from Vital Voices Global Partnership, a US women's advocacy group of which Clinton is honorary co-chair. The Chinese authorities had confined the 80-year-old Gao, a retired medical doctor, to her home in central China since the beginning of this month in an apparent bid to stop her from receiving the award. A senior Chinese Communist Party official reportedly went to Gao's home, telling her not to attend the event. 'I'm delighted to learn from the Chinese government that our request to President Hu and Vice Premier Wu that Dr. Gao be allowed to travel freely to the United States has been granted, and that Dr. Gao's decision to accept her award from Vital Voices honoring her lifetime of work will be respected,' Clinton said in a statement."