Manila (AsiaNews/AP) Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese surgeon better known as the SARS doctor, cannot go to Manila. "Although I have retired," he said, "I still work for the military and there are rules that don't allow me to go abroad." For this reason he will not travel to the Philippines to receive in person the Award conferred by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize Committee.
A Foundation official confirm that Mr Jiang was "still under some kind of house arrest" and therefore unable to collect the award. Dr Jiang's brother would represent him at the ceremony scheduled for September 1 in Manila.
Dr Jiang was arrested on June1 ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown after writing a letter urging senior Communist party leaders to change the official version of the events surrounding the Tiananmen massacre. "Student protests," he wrote, "were a patriotic movement. [. . .] Let us correct the errors of the Party," he wrote.
In April 2003 Dr Jiang had written another letter to China's media revealing the true extent of the SARS danger and naming those government officials involved in the spread of the virus. In doing so he spurred the authorities into action to counter the disease. Until then they had prevented public officials from talking publicly about the virus and the relative incidence of the viral infection across the country.
In giving him the award the Magsaysay Foundation recognised "his brave stand for truth in China". (LF)