March 15, 2023 – 09:14
The Chinese doctor Xiang Yin Zhong, who publicly informed the world of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the 2003 Chinese SARS epidemic, has died at the age of 91 – writes bbc.
In the SARS epidemic of 2003, 8,000 people were infected and 774 people died. Jiang was working in a hospital in Beijing at the time and was worried that the Chinese health minister was talking about only a few cases of the deadly disease being found, as he had seen hundreds infected with his own eyes.
The doctor wrote a letter to the Chinese leadership, but the letter was leaked to foreign media, letting the whole world know that China was hiding the real numbers. The country’s leadership apologized, the WHO was allowed in, and the minister and mayor of Beijing were dismissed. Chiang was placed under house arrest.
A year later, Chiang called on the Communist Party to admit that it had sinned in the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the military killed hundreds or thousands of peaceful protesters in 1989. Chiang was then working as a surgeon in Beijing and had seen the massacre and its aftermath firsthand. “Our party must admit its mistake,” he wrote at the time. Both Chiang and his wife were taken into custody, but the doctor wrote to President Xi Jinping in 2019 to admit the massacre was a crime.
Chiang in 2004, when he made headlines with his criticism of the Tiananmen Square massacre:
