China Releases the SARS Whistle-Blower
By Joseph Kahn
July 21, 2004

Chinese military authorities have released the prominent surgeon who exposed China's SARS cover-up and condemned the 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters, apparently bowing to the doctor's status as a local hero and to international pressure to free him, people informed about his case said Tuesday.

The doctor, Jiang Yanyong, 72, returned home Monday night after about 45 days in military custody, where he underwent political indoctrination and was investigated for possible criminal activity, one person told about his case said. He is not expected to be charged with a crime.

Dr. Jiang, who is a senior Communist Party member and holds a rank corresponding to lieutenant general or major general in the West, is expected to be kept under surveillance and to be prohibited from making contact with outsiders.

Yet the decision to allow him to return home appears to amount to a rare victory for an individual who directly and repeatedly confronted China's Communist Party leaders. In a letter released in February, Dr. Jiang pressed government leaders to admit that the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989 was wrong.

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While there is no evidence that senior officials are reconsidering their stance that the crackdown was justified, the decision to detain and then release Dr. Jiang suggests that leaders are conflicted when handling high-level dissent on the issue. That may stimulate hopes that the party will sooner or later apologize for the violent suppression of the Tiananmen protesters.

''I think many people believe that detaining him was stupid,'' said a party official interviewed while Dr. Jiang was being held. ''On the one hand, he can't be allowed to criticize without punishment. But on the other, party elders do not allow their own people to be punished for nothing. He is elderly, he has a certain status and he did nothing wrong.''

The detention prompted sustained international criticism.

There was no official announcement of Dr. Jiang's detention on June 1, and the government has said nothing publicly about his release. Dr. Jiang's wife and children could not be reached for comment.

But it seems likely that the authorities will claim internally that Dr. Jiang showed remorse for his actions and, in Chinese party terminology, made progress in his political thinking under the instruction of military authorities.

While in custody Dr. Jiang wrote a ''thought report'' each day. By the end of his detention, Dr. Jiang had altered the report in a way that may allow his interrogators to claim that he admitted errors, the person informed about his case said.

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Dr. Jiang's wife, Hua Zhongwei, was shown a seven-page statement written by Dr. Jiang containing reflections that the authorities said were confessional in tone.

The doctor, the person said, wrote that he had learned that the ''Communist Party confronted by the student protests was much like a patient with complicated colorectal cancer where, without emergency surgery, death was imminent.''

The statement suggests that Dr. Jiang acknowledged the threat that the party perceived in the student-led protests. It does not directly endorse the decision to crush dissent.

Dr. Jiang has maintained that he had no role in circulating his February letter, addressed to top officials, to the domestic or international news media. But he acknowledged in his thought report that the letter might have fallen into the hands of people who used it ''for their own purposes.''

The statements as described would appear to fall short of the full self-confession that the authorities sometimes require before releasing an opponent.

Dr. Jiang became a well-known national and international figure last year. He disclosed then in a letter to top leaders, which was obtained by the international news media, that many Beijing hospitals, including the elite No. 301 Military Hospital, where he is a semiretired senior surgeon, had far more SARS patients than the health authorities had reported.

Shortly afterward, Chinese leaders fired the minister of health and the mayor of Beijing, acknowledged having provided inaccurate information about the spread of SARS, and began an extensive nationwide effort to combat the disease. Dr. Jiang was initially hailed as a hero even by the official news media, but such coverage soon ceased and he and his family were closely monitored.

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Dr. Jiang told friends that as he approached his twilight years he intended to use his newfound celebrity for greater good. In February it became clear that his target was the Tiananmen crackdown.

Discussing the event is taboo in party circles. Officials fear that reopening that wound could lead to demands for political reform and threaten current leaders, nearly all of whom owe their positions to the political upheaval that followed the crackdown.

In a letter addressed to the leadership, and obtained by The New York Times and other publications on the eve of the annual legislative session in March, Dr. Jiang described his own role treating wounded civilians on the night of the crackdown, June 4, 1989. He said two party elders, including former President Yang Shangkun, now deceased, later told him that the party would sooner or later need to admit that killing civilians was wrong.

On June 1, under instructions from Jiang Zemin, the military chief and China's semiretired top official, Dr. Jiang and Ms. Hua were taken into custody, people told about his case said.

The conditions of their internment at a military medical center were unusually comfortable, the person close the family said. Ms. Hua, who is a medical researcher, was allowed to visit her husband regularly. She was released in mid-June.

People close to the family said they feared that the authorities were seeking to build a legal case against Dr. Jiang. But in the end the authorities appear to have failed to compile evidence of a crime, or to have decided that any charges against Dr. Jiang would be regarded as persecuting the man who had told the truth about SARS.

It is unclear if the authorities will suppress any future political statements by Dr. Jiang. But in a letter sent to his wife last week, he said he now intended to tackle another medical emergency that officials have only begun to fully recognize.

''When I get out, the next thing I will direct my energies to is the problem of AIDS,'' he wrote.