Geodog

Chinese hero Dr. Jiang Yanyong speaks out again, this time on Tiananmen Square

Last year, when I was reporting on the SARS outbreak in China on SARS Watch, I was very impressed by the Chinese Army doctor, Dr. Jiang Yanyong, who broke official China's silence on SARS by sending a letter to Time magazine detailing the real situation. He was one of the many heros of the first SARS epidemic.

Today, I was attending a conference in Berkeley on China's Digital Future, I found that Dr. Jiang had recently done it again. According to this article in the International Herald Tribune, he wrote a letter to the prime minister, several deputy premiers, the Politburo and the chairman and deputy chairman of the National People's Congress, in which he recounted a visit he had with former Chinese President Yang:

Jiang told Yang, who died later that year, of the bloody scenes in Army Hospital 301, where he was a director of surgery, when scores of dead and dying students were carried in: "Lying before me this time were our own people, killed by children of the Chinese people, with weapons given to them by the people, in Beijing, the magnificent capital of China."

"Yang indicated that the June 4 incident was one in which the Communist Party committed the most serious mistakes in its history," writes Jiang. "He said he could not do anything to correct the mistake, but that the mistakes would be corrected in the future." ....

for Jiang, Tiananmen is the worst of the Communist Party's crimes since the Cultural Revolution, and he has sided with Professor Ding in her search for justice.

"Who among us does not have parents, children, and brothers and sisters?" he writes in his open letter to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and other top officials. "... Anyone whose family members were unjustly killed should voice the same request [an accounting of those killed]. Each Chinese Communist Party member, Chinese citizen and human being must courageously support this just demand."

It is encouraging to see an example of such bravery in action, especially when our own political landscape is full of examples of craven cowardice and avoidance of personal responsibility.