March 8, 2004-A Beijing doctor who rose to fame last year by exposing the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic has written a letter to China's leaders urging a reassessment of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Jiang Yanyong wrote the letter just days before the ongoing meeting of China's 3,000-member parliament, the National People's Congress, and three months ahead of the 15th anniversary of the crackdown.
"The new leaders of the party and the country ... should re-examine June 4," he wrote in the letter, referring to the date in 1989 when tanks and soldiers moved to suppress demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square.
"Our party should rely on itself to settle the mistakes it has committed. The earlier and the more thoroughly it settles the mistakes, the better," said the letter, posted on a Hong Kong news website.
Jiang confirmed that he had indeed written the letter, but said he had not received a reply yet.
"So far, the government hasn't reacted," he told AFP by telephone.
Hundreds of demonstrators died in the streets around Tiananmen Square in June 1989, when the Chinese leadership decided to use force to put an end to weeks of pro-democracy and anti-corruption demonstrations.
Jiang, who was a surgeon at the Beijing's No. 301 Hospital during the crackdown, related in his letter how he and his colleagues had worked frantically to save the bullet-riddled victims being brought in.
He described a revealing conversation he had in 1998 with late Yang Shangkun, who had been president of the country in the spring of 1989.
Yang agreed that the decision to send soldiers against demonstrators had been a mistake, according to the letter.
"Yang said June 4 was the gravest error in the history of the party," the letter said. "He said that it was not in his power to redress it, but that eventually it would definitely be redressed."
Jiang was a key figure in exposing the Chinese government's cover-up of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in spring last year.
After listening to the leadership's denial that it had any health crisis on its hands, he decided to go public with his knowledge that the number of SARS patients was much larger than admitted.
With his new letter, Jiang has again addressed an official denial, but this time of an issue of much larger consequence, and he appeared aware of the risk he was taking.
"After much deliberation, I have decided to write this letter to you," Jiang wrote in his letter to the leadership.
"Of course, I have considered the possibility that by writing this letter I will encounter various consequences, but I nevertheless decided to explain my exact views to you," he said.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/74408/1/.html
