From AP, via Examiner.com:
A Chinese military surgeon who broke government secrecy to reveal the true scale of Beijing’s SARS outbreak in 2003 has been banned from leaving China to accept a human rights award, a rights watchdog said Wednesday. Jiang Yanyong, 76, was praised as an “honest doctor” by Chinese media after he wrote a letter to reporters saying that Beijing had more than 100 unreported SARS cases. The revelation was followed by embarrassing official admissions and the firing of a Cabinet minister.
Jiang has been awarded the Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award by the New York Academy of Sciences, but his work unit banned him from leaving China to accept the prize in September, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a faxed statement. [Full Text]
