Word: zhu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...insists it was murder. She and other family members say that Zhu had adapted well to prison life. He enjoyed working in the prison library and teaching English to inmates, and he had taken up oil painting. A portly, balding book lover who once studied economics in Italy, he had just devoured The Count of Monte Cristo and identified with the main character, who wreaks slow revenge on those who have falsely accused him. In his last week, says Fan, Zhu promised to take her on an around-the-world trip and to teach history to his nephew; he also...
...What's more, Fan adds, Zhu had recently warned that the family was in danger. He advised them to lock their doors at night and told Fan that prison authorities left him alone in the library because they wanted him to kill himself...
...That was odd, but not the first time that Zhu had portrayed himself as the innocent victim of dark forces. He had long maintained that other officials in Heilongjiang had set him up after he discovered their connection to the bomb-shelter debacle. In a 34-page letter to the court, he described being chained to a hook on the cement floor of a prison basement as interrogators beat him into confessing. "If you die here," he quoted one saying, "your family won't even get your ashes." The official who oversaw the investigation, he went...
...Whatever the case, the corruption scandal that led to Zhu's downfall still creeps along. In October, police detained Heilongjiang's former Party chief, Tian Fengshan, accusing him of corruption dating to the bomb-shelter scandal. It seemed likely that prosecutors would review Zhu's testimony. Not long after, claims Fan, two retired judicial officials visited Zhu in prison and "warned him not to 'make things messy,'" (A warden declined to comment on the visit.) After that, Zhu became afraid, advising his daughter in Japan against visiting home and warning his sister to watch her son carefully. When authorities unexpectedly...
...days after Zhu's death, Fan Zhen posted her accusation on the Internet. Censors immediately removed it, but others soon offered their own commentary. "Looks like political murder," reads a typical posting on the People's Daily website. Chinese have seen this type of intrigue before. A Beijing vice mayor, Wang Baosen, committed suicide during a 1995 scandal that brought down a Politburo member and might have gone higher if Wang had lived. Likewise, Zhu's case will remain forever murky. To his widow, however, there is no doubt that he died at somebody else's hands. "My rage," says...