CHINA’S celebrated Sars whistleblower is likely to face formal charges for criticising the Government over the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square 15 years ago.

Jiang Yanyong, 72, a military surgeon, revealed earlier this year that he had treated student demonstrators who had been shot by soldiers at night during the protests in Beijing in 1989.

He has been subjected to fierce interrogations since his arrest last month and is now being subjected to political re-education.

Dr Jiang’s family have not heard from him in more than a month apart from a single handwritten note. A family member told The Times: “We are very concerned and have no idea when or if he will come back.”

He became widely known in March 2003 when he exposed the extent of the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome by contradicting official statements that had played down the crisis.

His stand led to the sacking of Beijing’s mayor and the Health Minister, creating a political crisis immediately after President Hu Jintao’s appointment as leader.

Despite initial fears for his safety, Dr Jiang’s face appeared on magazine covers and billboards after the Communist Party leadership was forced to acknowledge its culpability over the spread of the Sars virus. Beijing took the rare step of praising Dr Jiang. Now the Government appears to have turned on him.

“The authorities are gradually building up to their final retaliation against him, possibly in the form of connecting him with overseas hostile organisations and charging him with subversion,” Jiang Rui, his daughter who lives in California, said.

Dr Jiang wrote an open letter in February that urged the party leadership to reconsider its treatment of the students who had called for democracy in 1989.

The letter, which was reprinted in The Wall Street Journal, chronicled the doctor’s role during the Tiananmen crackdown.

He described a stream of bodies being brought into his hospital, which led him to conclude that the official death toll underestimated the extent of the slaughter.

The Government applied informal pressure to silence Dr Jiang after the letter’s publication, tapping his phone and monitoring his movements.

He and his wife were detained on June 1, three days before the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings. But while his wife and dozens of other dissidents who were detained in the weeks leading up to the anniversary have since been freed, Dr Jiang remains in the custody of the People’s Liberation Army and security forces.

“Now it seems that they merely used the June 4 event as a smokescreen to buy time, perhaps for interrogation purposes,” his daughter said.

• The Hong Kong legislature yesterday blamed senior health officials for paying too little attention to Sars when it emerged in China’s Guangdong province. It said that Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, the Hong Kong Health Secretary, and Dr Margaret Chan, the health director at the time, were “not satisfactory” in their reaction to the epidemic.

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