High 'suicide' rate among officials tells its own story

On April 8, when the citizens of Putian learned that their mayor had taken his own life, many assumed he was being investigated for corruption - the city government had to issue a statement saying that he was not.

Zhang Guosheng , who jumped from a toilet on the fifth storey of his office building, was the eighth senior official to commit suicide this year. Aged 53 and a graduate of the Central Party School, Zhang ran a booming city on the coast of Fujian province ; there was nothing in a promising career to explain his action.

On March 26, Wei Jingling , the 52-year-old director of the education bureau of a district in Zhaotong city in Yunnan , died on her third day of investigation by four officers of the city's procuratorate. The official explanation was that she went into an adjoining room and stabbed herself with a fruit knife.

'The public assumption is that these officials were under investigation for corruption,' said Chen Minggui , a Hong Kong consultant. 'Often, police or investigators bully and threaten the suspect and leave them the means to take their own lives, like a knife or a rope. It is especially suspicious when the suicides occur in official custody.'

One such case occurred on November 28 last year, when Wu Xiaoqing , 57, a former senior judge in Chongqing , used a drawstring from his underwear to hang himself in his cell just after midnight at a detention centre where he was being held. He was accused of taking 3.7 million yuan (HK$4.2 million) in bribes from gangsters and having 5.18 million yuan in income that he could not explain.

The suicide of these officials has a heavy legal consequence - the case against them is closed. In one elegant description, gaiguan lunding, the lid of the coffin closes and with it the dossier against the individual. This is because only a court - and not prosecutors - can decide whether a person's income was legal or illegal. With no court appearance and no judgment, allegations against them remain allegations. As a result, their family, mistress and other associates who may have benefited from his corruption are not pursued.