Yu Qiyi
Photo: AP
Yu Qiyi, a Communist Party member and chief engineer of a state-owned company, the Wenzhou Industry Investment Group in Wenzhou, China, has died after interrogation by six Communist Party investigators. According to reports in state-run newspaper the Beijing Times, his head was held in a tub of icy water in an attempt to extract a confession.
He was taken to hospital and died in the early hours of April 9. The coroner’s report, which was published on the Beijing Times website, said that Mr Yu died after inhaling fluids that caused his lungs to malfunction. Photos published on this site also showed several bruises on his body. The investigators will be tried for intentional assault.
Yu Qiyi had been detained since early March for internal investigations into a land deal. He died during the shuanggui process, an internal disciplinary procedure where officials are asked to confess wrongdoings.
Yu’s wife, Wu Qian, has said that he had many internal and external injuries and she suggested that he had been tortured in other ways. “Yu Qiyi was a strong man before the shuanggui process, but he was thin by the time he died,” she told the Beijing Times.
According to the reports that are available, people facing shuanggui are usually apprehended at their places of work or summoned for “voluntary visits” with investigators. They are then held in an undisclosed location, often a specially designed hotel or office building. There have been reports of psychological manipulation and physical torture such as sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, burning the detainee’s skin with cigarettes, and beating. Since shuanggui is rooted in Party regulations instead of formal legislation, it is a form of extra-legal detention. Because such regulations lack the transparency afforded by a legal system, the extent to which human rights violations are committed during shuanggui is not well documented.
Yu Qiyi’s death was initially reported as an accident.
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