Chongqing police ‘hero’ in Bo Xilai’s ‘strike black’ campaign commits suicide
Local crime squad chief Zhou Yu hanged himself in a hotel room, officials said
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 08 April, 2014, 12:42pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 08 April, 2014, 9:01pm
Alice Yan [email protected]
The late police officer was once commended for his anti-crime efforts by Bo Xilai (inset), before Bo went on trial in Jinan (above) last year. Photos: AFP, Reuters
A senior Chongqing police official, once hailed as a hero of Bo Xilai’s “singing red, striking black” campaign, recently committed suicide, authorities said.
Zhou Yu’s body was found hanging in a hotel room in Yuzhong district on Friday evening, according to the official microblog account of the district’s public security bureau. Zhou had headed the district’s Economic Crime Investigation Team.
His body was reportedly cremated on Monday. Zhou was aged 45, according to mainland politics reporter Liu Xiangnan’s weibo.
An initial investigation found that Zhou struggled with diabetes for a long time and had other complications including heart disease. He had been taking insulin injections for diabetes through the years.
Zhou became despondent after recently being diagnosed with a serious liver problem, and behaved pessimistically in front of colleagues, according to the security bureau’s microblog post.
Zhou’s death was a tragic turn in an otherwise distinguished career. He was one of 20 police officers awarded by Chongqing’s Public Security Bureau for invaluable contributions to then party secretary Bo’s “striking black” campaign in May 2010, the Chongqing Morning Post reports.
The crackdown on organised crime was effective, but controversial for the use of arbitrary detentions, imprisonment without trial and alleged torture against suspects. Thousands of local police officers and businessmen were wrongly convicted, and only some of them were exonerated after Bo’s downfall.
Bo was a rising political star in the Communist Party, until his right-hand mand, Chongqing deputy police chief Wang Lijun, fled to a US consulate in neighbouring Sichuan province in February last year in an apparent attempt to defect. Wang also revealed that Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was involved in the murder of a British businessman.
There was an ensuing investigation into Bo's family, wealth and questionable connections, triggering one of China's biggest political scandals in recent history. Bo was stripped of all his posts in the party last April and was convicted of corruption and other crimes barely six months later. His wife, Gu, received a suspended sentence for murder last August.
During the "striking black" crackdown, Zhou was the deputy head of a team investigating property developer Peng Zhimin, a former top shareholder of the Hilton Chongqing Hotel, according to famed mainland lawyer Li Zhuang, who was among those persecuted in Bo's campaign.
In 2011, Peng was sentenced to life in prison for gang activities, organising prostitution and bribing officials. The government confiscated his assets, worth of billions of yuan, at the time, but these were returned to his family after Bo’s trial last year.
