Public in scandal-laden city question petitioner's death
Updated: 2008-05-14 00:00
Li was known to have traveled to Beijing several times during the past year hoping to bring Zhang Zhi'an, Communist Party chief of Yingquan district in Fuyang and his old friend's son, to justice for turning nearly 500 hectares of fertile farmland to industrial and ecological belts, hotels, a golf course, a racecourse and a landmark government office building.
Sources close to the local government said construction of the office building, a copycat "White House", cost at least 30 million yuan (4.3 million US dollars), nearly one third of the total revenue of Yingquan district.
Yingquan, with 640,000 people, is a poverty-stricken rural town and the per capita annual income of its farmers is slightly more than 2,000 yuan (285 US dollars).
Just across the "White House", inaugurated in 2003, was a ramshackle primary school building that needed international aid for renovation, according to earlier reports by China Central Television and several newspapers including China Youth Daily and Southern Metropolitan News.
These reports, which first appeared in January 2007, caused widespread public anger but Zhang Zhi'an remained at the Yingquan's top post and his office remained in the "White House".
"If not for the Chinese national flag hanging in front of the building, we'd thought we were in the U.S.," one villager said.
Li Guofu, in his petition letter to authorities in Beijing, said Zhang had "put a close friend in charge of the construction and sold the old government office facilities to real estate developers, too."
Early last year, Li complained to his family that Zhang "was about to revenge". He refused to be intimidated and continued his petition trips to Beijing. But each time he told his wife he went to buy his medicine.
He was detained by the local procuratorate in August, and was never to go home again. His wife Yuan Aiping was detained for 34 days and was under police scrutiny until today.
The procuratorate found in Li's suitcase seven petition letters and many photos listing Zhang's alleged "abuse of land" and "misappropriation of public fund".
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