China urged to aid Dutch double murder probe
CHINA has been asked to help investigate the murder of a former Hongkong woman and her Chinese husband who were given political asylum in The Netherlands after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy supporters.
Dutch police went to the Chinese Embassy in Amsterdam last week in a bid to widen the hunt for the killers of Ms Wong Wai-tjen and her husband Mr Lee Yun-fai, who were shot in their house in the quiet, historic town of Buren.
Mr Peter Bekker, a police spokesman from Nijmegen, about 60 kilometres away, said they had ruled out a political motive for the double killing.
''It is a murder with a criminal background,'' Mr Bekker said.
''We have found some evidence that points in that direction.'' The Netherlands' largest selling newspaper, Der Telegraaf, carried a story on February 6, the day after the bodies were discovered, claiming it ''looked like a payback'' killing linked to the Chinese criminal scene.
Mr Bekker refused to go into details about the murders or what type of illegal activity he believed they were linked to, other than to confirm the couple had been shot and were found in an upstairs room.
He would not reveal if they had been bound or tortured, or if anything was missing from the house.
Their nine-month-old daughter was found alive in a downstairs room and has been put in a foster home.
He said the police had launched a full scale hunt, headed by a 25-strong team of detectives, for two Asian men who were seen in the town around the time of the killings.
''We think the people who did it were Chinese,'' Mr Bekker said.
Neighbours remember seeing the two men on a road just outside Buren. There is a small Chinese community in the town, which has a population of 10,000.
Detectives believe Wong and Lee, both 30, were murdered three days before their bodies were discovered on February 5.
The couple had been married shortly after moving to The Netherlands from Hongkong three years ago.
They are both believed to have been shot in the head, in what appears to be a premeditated killing. The police are finding it hard to obtain any assistance from the country's ''closed'' Chinese community.
The couple's death follows a spate of murders in The Netherlands' Asian community over the past two years, but Dutch police do not believe the killings of Lee and Wong are linked to these.
A Hongkong Narcotics Bureau detective said the European country was a major store house for drugs smuggled from Southeast Asia.
So far no approach has been made to the Hongkong police to assist in the murder investigation.
