Lawmaker to press UN over death of Li Wangyang

A Hong Kong pro-democracy activist plans to ask the United Nations to press Beijing for a new inquiry into the death of mainland June 4 dissident Li Wangyang.

Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, plans to fly to Geneva on Tuesday to urge the UN human rights subcommittee to take action on the issue. Lee will take along a petition signed by 20 concern groups.

Mainland investigators concluded Li committed suicide, but his family rejected that verdict in an interview with a Hong Kong newspaper published last week.

Li, 62, a physically fragile, nearly blind and deaf dissident, was found dead in a hospital ward in Shaoyang, Hunan, on June 6. That was two days after the 23rd anniversary of the June 4, 1989, crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

An official autopsy report, made public by Hunan authorities on July 12, said Li had torn a strip from a bed sheet and used it to hang himself from a window while his roommate slept.

Lee said the official investigation report left many questions unanswered. He hopes the UN will press the central government to launch a thorough investigation, lift its surveillance of Li’s family and pay them compensation.