The Hindu : International : China frees whistle-blower

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 22, 2004

International

International

China frees whistle-blower

Beijing: The Chinese military surgeon who exposed the Government's cover-up of the SARS crisis was released on Tuesday after seven weeks of ``political re-education'', his family said. Jiang Yanyong (72), a semi-retired general in the People's Liberation Army, had been detained at a secret location where he was forced to undergo daily study sessions aimed to make him renounce a critical letter he had written about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. It was unclear whether he had signed a letter of contrition to secure his freedom. Dr. Jiang's family said he was in good health, but forbidden to talk to the media without the prior approval of his superiors at the No. 301 military hospital in Beijing. Dr. Jiang and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were detained on June 1 while going to the U.S. embassy, where they were applying for visas to visit their California-based daughter. They were among dozens of dissenters who were removed from public view or held under house arrest in the run-up to the politically sensitive 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4. Mrs. Hua and most of the others were released within two weeks, but Dr. Jiang was held for what sympathisers called `brainwashing,' which would have required authorisation by Jiang Zemin, the head of the military. — Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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