By Brian Carnell

Monday, July 26, 2004

In June, Chinese authorities detained Dr. Jiang Yanyong and allegedly subjected him to interrogation over a letter he wrote about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Jiang, 72, came to the Western media's attention in late 2003 when he was the first Chinese surgeon brave enough to defy the government's ban on mentioning the SARS epidemic. Jiang wrote a letter to Time Magazine and a Beijing television station outlining the truth about the severity of the SARS outbreak in China.

Jiang followed that up in February by writing a letter detailing his activities treating patients during the brutal suppression of the student uprising in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Jiang's letter read, in part,

In 1989, students in Beijing, in view of the corrupt government at that time, voiced their just demand for fighting corruption and bureaucratic racketeering and for promoting clean and honest government. The students' patriotic acts had the support of the overwhelming majority of people in Beijing and the country. However, a small number of leaders who supported corruption resorted to means unprecedented in the world and in China. They acted in a frenzied fashion, using tanks, machine guns, and other weapons to suppress the totally unarmed students and citizens, killing hundreds of innocent students in Beijing, and injuring and crippling thousands others.

Then, the authorities mobilized all types of propaganda machinery to fabricate lies and used highhanded measures to silence the people across the country. Now 15 years have gone by and the authorities are expecting the people to forget the incident gradually. In the past they called this Tiananmen incident a "counterrevolutionary rebellion," and then they called it the "1989 political storm." Giving the incident a different name specifically indicates the perpetrators' guilty conscience. If it was a storm, why did they have to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to suppress it? Why should they use machine guns and tanks to kill innocent ordinary people? Thus, I propose that we must correctly characterize the students' patriotic movement on 4 June 1989.

I am a surgeon at the PLA Number 301 Hospital. When the June 4th Incident took place in 1989, I was the director of the hospital's department of routine surgery. On the evening of 3 June, I heard repeated radio broadcasts urging people not to go to the streets. At about 2200 when I was in my dormitory, I heard continuous gunshots from the north. Several minutes later, my pager beeped. It was the emergency room's call. So I rushed there. I could not believe my eyes--lying on the floor and the examination tables were seven young people with blood all over their faces and bodies. Two of them were later confirmed dead after an EKG test. My brain buzzed and I almost passed out. I have been a surgeon for more than 30 years. When I was a member of the medical team of the PLA Railway Corps that built the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, I also saved many wounded soldiers, but they were injured by inevitable accidents during the construction process. However, 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. But I could not afford the time to think at that time. After another salvo of gunshots, more wounded young people--I didn't know the exact number--were brought to the emergency room by people in the vicinity with pull carts and pedicabs. While I examined the injured, I also requested my staff to notify other surgeons and nurses to come to the emergency room. All 18 surgical rooms in our hospital were used for emergency treatment for the injured. My job in the emergency room was to determine the nature of the injuries and treat the injured. During the two-hour period from 2200 to midnight, our hospital's emergency room accepted 89 patients with bullet wounds. Seven of them later died despite emergency treatment. In the 18 surgical rooms, doctors in three groups spent most of the night performing surgical operations to save all those who could be saved.

In June, shortly before the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square anniversary, Jiang and his wife were both arrested. She was released a couple weeks later with orders not to talk to the press. Jiang was released on July 19th after having apparently undergone unsuccessful "re-education" classes with Chinese authorities. His release was only partial, however, as he is forbidden to talk to the press about his detention and is being closely monitored by Chinese authorities.

Sources:

Beijing keeping close watch on Sars informer. Chua Chin Hon, The Straits Times, July 23, 2004.

Dr. Jiang Yanyong's letter calling for June 4 reappraisal. Jian Yanyong, February 24, 2004.

Beijing 'brainwashes Sars hero'. The BBC, July 6, 2004.

Sources: Chinese Doctor Being 'Brainwashed'. Voice of America, July 5, 2004.

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