Remembering the SARS Doctor Whistleblower

Jiang was hailed a hero but then spoke out about Tiananmen

We are sad to note the passing of Dr Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who blew the whistle on the SARS epidemic in 2003. He was 91 years old.

Can you believe it's been 20 years since SARS and now we're coming out of the global Covid-19 pandemic?

The death of the respected military surgeon was reported in Hong Kong media and abroad, as well as some friends in China, but not in state media.

The Metropole Hotel where SARS started in HK

When SARS broke out in early 2003 in China, it was played down by the government, and Jiang felt this was a public health emergency that people needed to know. 

It had also spread to Hong Kong via a mainland Chinese doctor who stayed in the Metropole Hotel in Kowloon. There were 1,755 cases, of which 298 people died in Hong Kong.

The then retired doctor wrote a letter to several news organisations refuting the official line, and accused China's then top health official Zhang Wenkang of "abandoning even his most basic standards of integrity as a doctor."

"I was telling the truth," Jiang told the state-run Beijing News in 2013. "I believed the government would treat me fairly."

Foreign journalists caught wind of the letter which led to the World Health Organisation extending its stay to inspect hospitals where Jiang said there were hidden cases, which put pressure on the government to fire Zhang and the mayor of Beijing.

Jiang was briefly hailed nationwide as an "honest doctor", and he used the respect garnered to write another letter, calling on the Chinese leadership to acknowledge the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square was wrong, and that the student movement had in fact been a "patriotic movement."

Jiang wrote about the fatal wounds he saw

He wrote about what he saw at No. 301 Military Hospital in Beijing the night of June 3 after the tanks rolled into the square and People's Liberation Army soldiers fired live ammunition at student protesters.

Jiang saw many of the wounded civilians in his hospital, hit by bullets designed to break apart after impact and shred internal organs.

"My brain buzzed and I almost passed out," he recalled. "Lying before me this time were our own people, killed by children of the Chinese people, with weapons given to them by the people."

But after this letter was released, Jiang and his wife were detained. He underwent several interrogation sessions and was not allowed to leave the country, basically under house arrest.

Jiang didn't stop pressing for accountability. Even in 2019 on the 30th anniversary of the crackdown, he wrote a letter to Xi Jinping demanding justice for the "crime" in 1989. Then 87 years old, Jiang was under house arrest again.

Li may never be remembered in China again

And now his heroic efforts of speaking out about the SARS epidemic are largely wiped out of textbooks.

In a 2017 test-prep school multiple choice question asked about Jiang's decision to come forward about SARS. The "correct" answer was B: Doing so was wrong, because it harmed the interests of the nation, the society and the community, and he should be subject to legal punishment.

Sadly Li Wenliang, the doctor who sounded the alarm about Covid-19 will never even get a mention. 

History repeats itself, almost 20 years later.