Tears welling in her eyes and trickling down her cheeks, Liu Yuehong talked about her deceased husband Yang Kuansheng.

"I feel very helpless and have no idea what to do I don't even know where I should be for the Spring Festival," the widow forlornly told China Daily on Tuesday, sitting in the pale winter sunlight of a hotel room in downtown Beijing.

Liu's life has turned upside down since Nov 26 when Yang, the 47-year-old deputy mayor of Wugang, Shaoyang city, in Hunan province, was found dead outside the government dormitory building where he lived.

Yang appeared to have used knives and scissors to cut his wrist and other parts of his body. According to a local police investigation and autopsy reports released two days after his death, he also tried to electrocute himself but failed. Exhausted from losing blood, Yang jumped off the third floor of his building, according to the reports.

Till then, 45-year-old Liu was a contented wife, a mother of a 20-year-old college student, and a doctor at Shaoyang Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital.

Convinced Yang was murdered, she has traveled across the nation from Hunan to Chongqing to Beijing, seeking help from legal experts and the media.

On Dec 30, a desperate Liu even knelt on a street outside a court in Chongqing to draw the attention of journalists covering the trial of a mafia-style gang there. But she was taken away and was told to leave the city by local officials.

"I can't go home because I don't trust the authorities at Wugang, Shaoyang or at the provincial level," she said. "Instead of investigating my husband's death, local police and government departments are closely watching us (Yang's family and friends)."

Yang's brother-in-law Lu Kaihua and friend Luo Qian, who traveled with Liu to Beijing, told China Daily that the three of them had changed their mobile phone numbers several times to try and prevent Hunan authorities tracking them down.

"They will stop us from seeking justice if they find us. The local police forced me to take a sightseeing tour in Guilin of Guangxi last month. They suspended me from duties and stopped my salary," said 40-year-old Luo, a librarian at a local middle school. Lu and Luo had to send their families to the countryside to avoid frequent questioning by police.

On Dec 28, Teng Biao, a Beijing lawyer who teaches at China University of Political Science and Law, helped them submit a letter to the Ministry of Public Security, seeking a re-investigation into the cause of Yang's death. Teng told China Daily yesterday the ministry had not replied yet.

"After a probe into the case and experts' analyses, we found at least 19 inconsistencies," Teng said.

Teng checked Yang's dormitory and sent local police investigation and autopsy reports to several legal and forensic experts in Guangzhou and Beijing.

Yang was in coma after losing a great deal of blood by cutting himself with knives, the autopsy report said, and Teng wondered how a man in coma could jump out of a window.

Teng also found several balls of crushed bloodstained tissue paper in the dorm's waste bin, which he said seemed weird as it suggested Yang had wiped blood with tissue paper before his death.

Liu said suicide could be ruled out according to the latest legal opinion provided by experts from Beijing.

"At about 9 pm on Nov 25, I received my husband's last phone call before his death. He told me two people wanted to harm him, and he would tell me the details the next day when we met in Shaoyang," said Liu, who was not with Yang when the death occurred as they worked and lived in Shaoyang and Wugang.

Liu said she only could reveal one of the two names Yang mentioned - Ju Xiaoyang, secretary of the CPC political and legislative affairs committee of Shaoyang city, which has jurisdiction over Wugang.

"Ju is involved in my husband's death, but he was also the head of the local police investigation team for the case. How could the investigation results be fair?" Liu said.

"I don't want to die those who want me to die are from Shaodong county (which is under the jurisdiction of Shaoyang city)," Liu quoted Yang's last words in a letter. Police found it in the dorm but showed it to Liu only recently.

"Officials from Shaodong are very powerful. Yang and some officials from Shaodong had some disagreements," Lu said.

Born in a village in Shaoyang's suburbs, Yang was a straight shooter who probably had displeased fellow officials, Luo said.

"I don't know if the Ministry of Public Security will re-investigate the cause of Yang's death. But it is my only hope now," Liu said.

Several officials, who claimed to be from the Beijing office of the Shaoyang government, knocked on Liu's hotel room door at around 1 am yesterday and tried to persuade them to go home. Liu insisted on staying and said yesterday on the phone that she was under surveillance by two officials.

Officials took Lu and Luo to the office in Beijing's suburb, and planned to send the two men and her on a night train heading to Hunan, she said.

A Beijing office official who refused to be named said he was not aware of the matter.

All three local officials - Ju Xiaoyang, Zeng Zhaoxun, spokesman for the Wugang city government, and Kang Wenxiang, chief of the Wugang public security bureau - reached by China Daily said they were busy and did not know why the Shaoyang government's Beijing office officials had Liu, Lu and Luo under surveillance.

They said they did not know whether the local authorities would re-investigate the cause of Yang's death.

Last year, 13 abnormal deaths of officials were reported nationwide, including Yang. Of them, three died accidentally and 10 committed suicide, Guangzhou Daily reported last week.

On Dec 21, Zhao Xianchun, vice-head of the organization department of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region CPC committee, committed suicide during a trip to Beijing.

"Most of these officials killed themselves at the end of the year, which is probably because cadres were under increasing pressure during year-end appraisals," Lin Zhe, a professor of the Central Party School of the CPC, is reported to have said.

Zou Qing contributed to the story

(China Daily 01/07/2010 page1)