Chinese democracy activist Li Wangyang, who spent more than two decades in jail after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was found dead in a hospital in Shaoyang city, Hunan province on the morning of June 6. Although local police ruled Li’s death as a suicide, friends, relatives, and rights groups have expressed their suspicion over the odd circumstances of his passing.
In 1989, Li was sentenced to 13 years in prison after trying to establish an independent labor union in his hometown of Shaoyang city. He was paroled in 2000 due to poor health, but in May 2001 was tried and re-sentenced to 10 years on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” According to a New York Times report in 2001, Li was convicted after he made contact with foreign dissidents and spoke with foreign media about China’s prison conditions. He was released in May 2011, blind, crippled, and nearly deaf due to mistreatment while in prison.
Li was being treated at the Daxiang District Hospital for diabetes and heart disease, according to the Associated Press. Li’s brother-in-law Zhao Baozhu told The Epoch Times that the family received a phone call from the hospital on Wednesday morning at around 7am notifying them of Li’s death. Li was found hanging from a window security bar with a strip of white cloth wound around his neck, though both his feet were planted on the ground, Zhao told the AP.
“We are all very shocked. This is impossible. He never had the thought [of committing suicide], these couple of days [he was] very normal,” Zhao said. Zhao also relayed that just a few days ago Li had told his sister that he wanted to buy a radio to stimulate his left ear, which was losing hearing. It is hard to believe that he would want to end his life, Zhao said.
Human rights activist Zhu Chengzhi, a friend of Li’s, told The Epoch Times that at around 9 a.m., the police took away Li’s body without approval from the family and refused to let them take photographs.
Hong Kong-based rights group Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy released a statement on Wednesday, noting that last Saturday, Li accepted an interview from a Hong Kong cable television station, expressing that he will continue to call for the Chinese government’s redress of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that occurred on June 4, 1989.
Meanwhile, Li’s friends expressed their suspicions regarding Li’s death. Fellow Hunan democracy activist Zhou Zhirong said, “Li Wangyang went to prison for 22 years and he didn’t even commit suicide. On the day of June 4, he was happily chatting with Zhu [Chengzhi] and was very optimistic about the future of democracy in China. He firmly believed that democracy would soon come to China and that dictatorship would come to an end. So, Li could not have committed suicide.” He also expressed that on the day of June 4, 10 security guards showed up to monitor Li at the hospital, so it is difficult to imagine that Li could commit suicide while the guards were watching over him.
Zhou also released a statement on Wednesday announcing the establishment of “The Committee to Investigate the Truth Regarding Li Wangyang’s Suicide.” The statement listed four main points that led Zhou and Li’s other democracy activist friends to suspect that local authorities had faked Li’s suicide after killing him themselves.
Democracy activist Tang Baiqiao is also a political dissident from Hunan province and was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He currently lives in exile in New York, but is still in contact with his dissident friends in Hunan.
In 2001, Tang was in contact with Li Wangling, Li’s sister, to discuss matters regarding Li’s attempt to publicize the torture he suffered while in prison. But shortly afterwards, her contacts with Tang were discovered by the authorities and she was charged with “contacting foreign hostile forces” and sent to three years in a labor camp.
Tang told The Epoch Times: “I wanted to expose this today so that more people can understand the brutalities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
With reporting by Gu Qing'er and Ariel Tian.
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