Chinese Man Kills Self to Protest Son's Death in Tiananmen - New York Times

ABC Spanish Daily Newspaper, via Associated Press

Ya Weilin and his wife, Zhang Zhengxia with a photo of their son, Ya Aiguo in 2007.

BEIJING â€" A Beijing man has hanged himself to protest the government’s refusal to account for his son’s death in a military assault on the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, a group that seeks justice for victims of the assault said Monday.

The group, Tiananmen Mothers, stated on its Web site that the man, Ya Weilin, had disappeared Thursday and was found Friday afternoon hanging in a newly constructed parking garage beneath his home.

The statement quoted family members as saying that Mr. Ya, 73, had written a note earlier that recounted the death of his son, Ya Aiguo, and warned that he would “fight with my death” against the government’s refusal to hear his grievances.

“I can tell that he was in extreme despair when he made the decision,” Ding Zilian, who heads Tiananmen Mothers, said in an interview. “His wife has just gotten out of the hospital for rheumatoid and it must be so hard for him to leave her,” she said.

“His wife told me Mr. Ya had been dreaming about his lost son for a few days in a row before he left home,” Ms. Ding said.

The son, Ya Aiguo, was said by his mother to have been shopping with his girlfriend several blocks west of Tiananmen Square, on the city’s main thoroughfare, when the 22-year-old was shot in the head as People’s Liberation Army troops moved through the city toward the Tiananmen protesters.

The government has maintained that about 200 people died in the assault the night of June 3 and 4, including many soldiers. But most estimates of the death toll from that night’s violence range from hundreds to several thousand.

Thousands of protesters were later arrested, and scores remain imprisoned today, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco rights group. But the Chinese government has said virtually nothing about the crackdown for 23 years, and has ignored demands that the assault be independently investigated and its victims compensated.

The Tiananmen Mothers statement said that Mr. Ya and his wife joined the group’s periodic protests and signed annual petitions demanding that the government address the deaths.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ya signed our yearly petitioning letter every year with their real names, despite police intimidation,” said Ms. Ding, of Tiananmen Mothers. “They received many threats from the police, but they never flinched.”

Her group’s statement called his death “a new sin that has been added to old unredressed grievances.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Ya’s suicide was linked to next the 23rd anniversary next Sunday of the Tiananmen crackdown. The government bars commemorations and protests of the incident and frequently moves to silence Tiananmen activists around that date.

In Hong Kong, 1,000 to 2,000 protesters marched on Sunday in an annual protest against the assault, the first of several events scheduled to mark the anniversary.

Mia Li contributed research in Beijing.