Jiang Yanyong: Whistleblower doctor who exposed China’s Sars cover-up dies

He died of pneumonia on Saturday in Beijing, own circle of relatives pals and Chinese-language media in Hong Kong reported. Dr Jiang became praised for saving lives after writing a letter withinside the early level of the Sars disaster which discovered officers have been gambling down the threat.

But he persevered residence arrest at one factor for his unwavering outspokenness. Sars inflamed greater than 8,000 humans international in 2003. Of these, 774 died, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) figures.

Dr Jiang have been running in a Beijing health facility in April 2003, while he became alarmed to pay attention the Chinese fitness minister telling the general public there have been best a handful of instances of a brand new lethal respiration disease.

The senior health practitioner stated he knew greater than one hundred humans had Sars – excessive acute respiration syndrome – in navy health facility wards alone. He despatched a letter exposing the lies withinside the respectable narrative to Chinese kingdom broadcasters, who left out it. But the letter became then leaked to overseas media which posted his account in full.

His revelations pressured the Chinese authorities to confess it had supplied fake information, and spurred the WHO into action. Strict containment measures have been imposed overnight, which helped sluggish the unfold of the virus.

His moves additionally brought about the sacking of China`s fitness minister and Beijing’s mayor on the time. “I felt I had to expose what became happening, now no longer simply to shop China, however to shop the world,” he stated approximately his moves.

The following year, Dr Jiang once more challenged Beijing. He known as on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to renowned its 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters have been wrong – and that hundreds, likely thousands, of civilians have been killed.

He wrote of his revel in running as a doctor in Beijing on that night. In a letter, he acknowledged how government “acted in frenzied fashion, the use of tanks, system weapons and different guns to suppress the definitely unarmed college students and citizens”.

Ordinary Chinese might be “an increasing number of dissatisfied and angry” with the CCP’s view of the protests as a counter-innovative riot, he stated. “Our celebration ought to cope with the error it has made,” he wrote.

He and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, have been later detained, however Dr Jiang remained for years undeterred at the topic. He wrote a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019, denouncing the Tiananmen Square crackdown as a “crime”.

Dr Jiang became born in 1931 withinside the japanese metropolis of Hangzhou to a rich banking own circle of relatives and went into medicinal drug after seeing his aunt die of tuberculosis. He is survived through his wife, a son and a daughter, in line with South China Morning Post.

Over his lifetime he obtained numerous civil honours recognising his public stands, consisting of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2004. “He broke China’s addiction of silence and pressured the reality of Sars into the open,” the award quotation read.

Dr Jiang’s revel in has drawn comparisons with China’s preliminary technique to the Covid-19 outbreak. Li Wenliang, a watch health practitioner in Wuhan, became investigated through police for “spreading rumours” after seeking to warn humans of a “Sars-like virus” in December 2019.

After falling unwell from Covid himself, Dr Li stated on Chinese social media that he questioned why government have been announcing no clinical personnel have been inflamed. Dr Li died of the virus in February 2020.