- BEIJING -- The Chinese military
surgeon who exposed the government's cover-up of the Sars crisis was released
yesterday after seven weeks of "political re-education", his
family said.
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- 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.
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- It was unclear last night whether he had signed a letter
of contrition to secure his freedom.
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- 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.
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- Dr Jiang and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were detained on
June 1 while going to the US embassy, where they were applying for visas
to visit their California-based daughter.
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- 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.
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- Ms 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 .
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- The detention and release have not been reported in the
domestic media, which is controlled by the propaganda ministry.
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- Disclosure would have hurt the communist leadership,
because the surgeon is a national hero. His decision to blow the whistle
on the Sars cover-up led to the resignations of the health minister and
the mayor of Beijing, and was praised on the front pages of state-run publications.
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- But Dr Jiang upset hardliners earlier this year, when
his letter in praise of the demonstrators who were slaughtered in 1989
was leaked to the foreign media.
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- It was the highest-known call for a reassessment of the
massacre. Supporters fear that Dr Jiang's enemies are trying to undermine
his standing, so that they can press charges against him.Yesterday, his
relatives made no mention of such concerns. They said only that the doctor
had been released because his study sessions had finished.
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- * Britain expressed concern yesterday over Beijing's
moves to prevent fully democratic elections being held soon in Hong Kong.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said in a report to parliament that
Britain still had substantial interests there.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1265583,00.html
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