SARS hero barred from leaving China

Jiang Yanyong, who exposed the cover-up of the SARS epidemic in 2003, will not be allowed to travel to the US to accept a human rights award, the South China Morning Post reported. The 75-year-old retired army surgeon was awarded the Heinz R. Pagels Award, which recognizes services on behalf of human rights, by the New York Academy of Sciences. The army denied him permission to go and accept it in September. Jiang's activities have been heavily retricted since he told foreign media about China's attempts to cover up SARS outbreaks in Beijing. He later spent eight months under house arrest for publicly denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He refused to comment when contacted, the newspaper reported. Chinese activist Hu Jia speculated the army wanted to maintain a stable environment for the five-yearly Communist Party Congress later this year.