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

• Former military surgeon who exposed China’s cover-up has passed away.
• Due to his constant outspokenness, he was once placed under house arrest.
• “He broke China’s habit of silence and forced the truth of Sars into the open.”

Jiang Yanyong, a former military surgeon who exposed China‘s cover-up of the Sars epidemic in 2003, has passed away at the age of 91.

He passed away from pneumonia on Saturday, according to reports from Hong Kong media in Chinese.

After Dr. Jiang wrote a letter in the early stages of the Sars crisis that revealed officials were downplaying the threat, he received praise for saving lives.

However, due to his constant outspokenness, he was once placed under house arrest.

In 2003, Sars infected more than 8,000 individuals worldwide. According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), 774 of these people died.

In April 2003, Dr. Jiang was working in a Beijing hospital when he heard the Chinese health minister telling the public that there were only a few cases of a new, lethal respiratory disease.

The senior specialist said he realized in excess of 100 individuals had Sars – extreme intense respiratory condition – in military medical clinic wards alone.

He wrote a letter to Chinese state broadcasters exposing the official narrative’s lies, but they ignored it. However, foreign media obtained the letter and published his entire account.

The WHO took action as a result of his revelations and the Chinese government’s admission that it had provided false information.

Overnight, strict containment measures were implemented to slow the virus’s spread.

Both the health minister of China and the mayor of Beijing at the time were fired as a result of his actions.

He stated about his actions, “I felt I had to reveal what was happening, not just to save China, but to save the world.”

Dr. Jiang again put Beijing to the test the following year. He demanded that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) acknowledge that the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters was unjustified and that hundreds or even thousands of civilians had been killed.

That night, he wrote about working as a surgeon in Beijing. “Acting in frenzied fashion, using tanks, machine guns, and other weapons to suppress the totally unarmed students and citizens,” he wrote in a letter.

He asserted that the CCP’s view of the protests as a counter-revolutionary riot would “increasingly disappoint and enrage” common Chinese. He wrote, “Our party must address the mistake it has made.”

He and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were later taken into custody, but Dr. Jiang remained unfazed about the subject for years. In 2019, he wrote a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping condemning the “crime” of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Born into a wealthy banking family in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 1931, Dr. Jiang chose medicine after witnessing his aunt’s death from tuberculosis. According to the South China Morning Post, he is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter.

He was awarded a number of civil honors throughout his lifetime for his public positions, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2004.

The award citation stated, “He broke China’s habit of silence and forced the truth of Sars into the open.”

Dr Jiang’s experience has drawn correlations with China’s underlying way to deal with the Coronavirus episode.

In December 2019, an eye doctor in Wuhan named Li Wenliang tried to warn people about a “Sars-like virus,” but police found him guilty of “spreading rumours.”

Dr. Li posted on Chinese social media that he questioned why authorities claimed that no medical staff had been infected after becoming ill with Covid. Dr Li passed on from the infection in February 2020.

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