BEIJING — The physician who uncovered China’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic in 2003 has died aged 91, his household confirmed on Wednesday.
Jiang Yanyong, then a physician in a Beijing army hospital, angered authorities when he knowledgeable international media of China’s makes an attempt to downplay the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, revealing the existence of a whole lot of beforehand hidden instances.
His funeral was held on Wednesday morning, mentioned Jiang’s daughter-in-law Cui Hong, who advised AFP she was “not allowed” to attend the ceremony, and declined to supply additional particulars on his dying. He reportedly died on Saturday.
SARS went on to kill greater than 800 folks worldwide, and China’s authorities got here below fierce worldwide criticism for initially masking up the truth that the illness emerged within the south of the nation.
Jiang later spent eight months below home arrest after publicly denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, throughout which the army crushed weeks of student-led democracy protests, killing a whole lot and probably 1000’s.
Jiang, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, despatched a letter to then-premier Wen Jiabao in 2004 calling for an official reassessment of the incident.
The whistleblower confronted a bunch of restrictions in direction of the top of his life and was barred from touring to the United States in 2007 to simply accept a human rights award.
There was no protection in mainland China’s censored media of Jiang’s dying, although a handful of social media customers posted tributes on the favored Weibo platform.
“He was a doctor who dared to speak the truth,” wrote one Weibo consumer.
Information about disasters and public well being crises remains to be tightly managed in authoritarian China.
In December 2019, a bunch of medical doctors in Wuhan have been reprimanded by police for spreading “rumors” after they warned on social media of a brand new SARS-like illness—later named COVID-19—spreading via the central Chinese metropolis.
Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, one of many medical doctors summoned by police, later died of COVID-19, unleashing a wave of public anger. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
