MCLC: Li Wangyang's death ruled suicide

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Li Wangyang's death ruled suicide
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Source: NYT (7/13/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/world/asia/china-concludes-li-wangyang-di
ssident-took-own-life.html

China Concludes That Dissident Committed Suicide
By ANDREW JACOBS 

BEIJING — The authorities in China’s central Hunan Province have
determined that a veteran dissident who was found dead in his hospital
room last month took his own life, a government-affiliated news service
reported on Thursday.

The findings, the result of a monthlong investigation by a handpicked team
of Chinese forensic experts, contend that the man, Li Wangyang, a
62-year-old labor activist who spent more than two decades in prison,
hanged himself with a strip of fabric he tore from his bedsheet.

That report, published by the Hong Kong China News Agency, appears to have
done little to ease the suspicions surrounding Mr. Li’s death on June 6,
days after he gave interviews proclaiming his determination to continue
agitating against China’s authoritarian government.

In Hong Kong, where thousands took to the streets last month to protest
the authorities’ initial ruling that Mr. Li had committed suicide, a
number of local officials and rights advocates said they would continue
pressing for an independent inquiry.

Critics have assailed the contention that Mr. Li killed himself, saying
his poor health — he was almost entirely blind, deaf and physically weak —
made it unlikely that he could orchestrate his own hanging. They also
questioned how he carried out the suicide given the presence of police
minders outside his hospital room.

Commissioned by the Hunan Province Public Security Bureau in response to
the public uproar over Mr. Li’s death, the report cited “experts” who
reviewed surveillance video and determined that only nurses, caregivers
and his roommates had entered Mr. Li’s room in the hours before his body
was found hanging from a window. It also said Mr. Li’s body bore no signs
of trauma and that a forensic investigation had determined he died from
hanging — a rebuttal to those who cited a post-mortem photograph, widely
circulated on the Internet, that appeared to show Mr. Li’s feet touching
the ground. “People have been hanged in positions that include standing,
sitting or even lying down,” the report said.

It is unclear how Mr. Li’s family and supporters in Hunan feel about the
inquiry’s findings because they have been kept incommunicado by the
police. On Friday, the cellphones of his sister, brother-in-law and a
half-dozen friends were turned off; last month, several said they were
under police surveillance and had been instructed not to talk to the media.

The report published by Hong Kong China News Agency, however, said that
Mr. Li’s family had accepted the findings. It included an image of a
handwritten letter purportedly written and signed by his sister, Li
Wangling, and her husband, Zhao Baozhu, asking reporters to leave them
alone. “We just want to deal with our grief and live a normal and peaceful
life,” the note said.

Shi Da contributed research.