![\"860BFEB9-1051-43CE-9D6A-F28DAC41E9DD_w268_r1\"](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2015\/11\/860BFEB9-1051-43CE-9D6A-F28DAC41E9DD_w268_r1.jpg\")
<\/a>Chinese paramilitary police march near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, March 7, 2014.\nAFP
\nA Chinese rights activist from the southern province of Guangdong has died in a police-run detention center, in what his family says are suspicious circumstances.<\/p>\n
Zhang Liumao was reported dead by authorities in the Guangzhou No. 3 Detention Center in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but his family has been prevented from viewing his body, they told RFA.<\/p>\n
Zhang had been charged with “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a public order charge often used to target critics of the government.<\/p>\n
But detention center staff gave no explanation to his family regarding the circumstances of his death, his sister Zhang Weichu told RFA.<\/p>\n
“The police were unwilling to give us any information about the circumstances, or about how or where he died,” Zhang Weichu said. “All they said was that he is dead.”<\/p>\n
“They told us to go there and go through the paperwork and discuss it with them.”<\/p>\n
She said Zhang Liumao’s body is still at the crematorium, and the family has refused to give permission for his cremation until they have more information.<\/p>\n
Link to writings<\/p>\n
According to Zhang Weichu, Zhang Liumao was detained in a sudden police raid on his home on Aug. 15, but his case hadn’t yet proceeded as far as a trial.<\/p>\n
She said his detention was likely linked to an unofficial literary magazine that had been circulating in Guangzhou.<\/p>\n
An employee who answered the phone at the detention center on Wednesday declined to comment on the case.<\/p>\n
“It’s not convenient for me to answer you, because there should be a unified message on this,” the employee said.<\/p>\n
Fellow rights activist Qu Bo said the charges were inappropriate for someone who had simply been expressing an opinion.<\/p>\n
“The law is vague on the matter of whether just speaking can constitute ‘picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,’ and as such I think that this favors the abuse of power,” Qu said.<\/p>\n
‘Opposing the Party’<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Zhang Liumao’s elder sister, Zhang Wuzhou, said she plans to demand an explanation from the detention center.<\/p>\n
“All we have had have been fragments of information from the police department when we went there,” she said. “They told us he had been ‘opposing the [ruling Chinese] Communist Party’.”<\/p>\n
“I just can’t get my head around how my brother died, and also, exactly what his crime was.”<\/p>\n
“It’s not very realistic to say that he was opposing the Communist Party, because we are just regular people,” she said.<\/p>\n
She added: “I feel so sad, anxious and confused, and sorry for my brother, because he lost his job and had no way to live, and therefore couldn’t easily start a family, and now this terrible thing has happened.”<\/p>\n
Family, friends turned away<\/p>\n
Freedom of speech activist Wu Bin, who accompanied Zhang Wuzhou to the detention center, said they had been refused entry.<\/p>\n
“There were nine of us, including lawyers and concerned friends, and we had all signed in … when they wouldn’t let us in, only the relatives,” Wu said.<\/p>\n
“[The family] asked for his personal belongings back, and they were told it was against the rules, and that they would be held in storage,” he said.<\/p>\n
Wu said that he and Zhang Wuzhou had visited the detention center a few weeks earlier and had also been refused permission to see Zhang Liumao.<\/p>\n
“The police officer swore to us that there was no beating or mistreatment of prisoners in that detention center, that all was well inside,” Wu said.<\/p>\n
“And now we have this happening,” he said. 2015-11-04 Chinese paramilitary police m … Continue reading
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