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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/world/asia/zhu-ling-case-re-e
1990s Poisoning Case Re-emerges, Unleashing Fresh Chinese Fury
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 10, 2013
BEIJING — The mysterious illness began with crippling stomach pain,
followed by blurry vision and sudden hair loss. By the time Zhu Ling, a
talented musician and chemistry student at one of China’s top universities,
emerged from a coma weeks later, she was partially paralyzed and nearly
blind, her faculties reduced to those of a child.
Enlarge This Image
The Help Zhu Ling Foundation
An undated photo of Zhu Ling, who was a 19-year-old student at one of China
’s top universities when she was poisoned.
The 19-year-old sophomore, doctors later determined, had been intentionally
poisoned with thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal sometimes used in Chinese
rat poison. A culprit was never found, though suspicions fell on a roommate
from a well-connected family who was questioned by the police but then
released.
Now, nearly two decades after Ms. Zhu was poisoned, with her name forgotten
by all but a determined band of supporters, her case has ricocheted back
into public consciousness , electrifying the nation with allegations of a
bungled investigation and uncomfortable questions about the power of China’
s political elite in a society where justice remains elusive.
In recent days, Chinese social media has been consumed by the case despite
an earlier effort to quash the conversation through aggressive censorship, a
move that only fueled wider interest — and greater fury. “Nineteen years
ago, the young Zhu Ling was poisoned,” Yao Chen, a film star with 45
million followers, wrote on China’s equivalent of Twitter. “Nineteen years
later, this name has again been poisoned.”
On Monday, an online petition was submitted to the White House’s “We the
People” platform imploring the American government to intervene in the case
. The petition , which had drawn more than 143,000 signatures by Friday,
calls on the Obama administration to deport to China the primary suspect,
despite a lack of evidence that she even lives in the United States.
“There was always anger and frustration over this case but it’s exploding
right now,” said John Aldis, who has followed Ms. Zhu’s plight since his
years as a doctor at the American Embassy in Beijing during the 1990s. “A
new generation of Chinese young people are realizing that a terrible
injustice was done, and they want their voices to be heard.”
The renewed interest was inspired by a lurid murder last month in Shanghai,
where a medical student at the prestigious Fudan University was accused of
spiking the water of his roommate with a toxic chemical. The police said the
student, who has been charged with intentional homicide, was driven by a
grudge described as “trivial.”
What began as an online conversation about the pressures of China’s cut-
throat education system and the dearth of mental health services, gave way
to discussion of other poisoning cases in China, many of them by students
consumed with jealousy.
But it was the attempted murder of Zhu Ling — and the notion that the
perpetrator was given a free pass because of her political pedigree — that
dominated the discussion. Those suspicions tapped into the widely held
belief that well-placed Communist Party officials and their relatives are
above the law.
“We want what we’ve always wanted — truth and justice,” Wu Chengzhi, Ms.
Zhu’s father, said in a brief phone interview.
Although the narrative of the case is riddled with unanswered questions and
unsubstantiated allegations, Ms. Zhu’s family and supporters have latched
on to the one known fact: that Ms. Zhu’s roommate at Tsinghua University,
Sun Wei, had access to thallium and was questioned by the police, but was
quickly released, according to accounts in the state media.
The police say they lacked evidence for an arrest. Critics have speculated
without any proof that Ms. Sun’s grandfather, a senior official in the
decades after the Communists came to power, and another relative, a former
vice mayor of Beijing, had made the problem go away. As for a possible
motive, they suggest Ms. Sun was envious of the victim’s beauty, and her
musical and academic achievements.
Ms. Zhu’s friends say crucial evidence from her dorm room disappeared
before the police began their investigation. According to Mr. Wu, the father
, investigators closed the case in 1998 but did not tell the family for
nearly a decade.
“If the investigation re-opens, there should also be an investigation of
police wrongdoings and who tried to intervene with the original
investigation,” said Zhang Jie, a lawyer who represents Ms. Zhu’s family.
Despite the mounting pressure, the authorities are not keen to revisit the
matter. On Wednesday, in a rare public response to media inquiries, the
Beijing Public Security Bureau defended its investigation but said the
passage of time and paucity of evidence limited its ability to reopen the
case. The statement also rejected accusations that its inquiry had been
influenced by outsiders. “The dedicated investigation team worked according
to law, and the investigation was never compromised or interfered with in
any way,” it said.
But in one encouraging sign for Zhu Ling’s supporters, the topic has been
unblocked on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog service, suggesting
that high-level officials have decided that suppressing the controversy was
counterproductive.
Still, the case has become something of a public relations challenge for
China’s new leadership. In the five months since he was appointed Communist
Party secretary, Xi Jinping has been trying to address rampant public
cynicism by attacking official corruption and the abuse of power, although
most of those efforts have so far been widely viewed as superficial.
In one especially ham-handed attempt to grapple with the controversy, Global
Times, a bilingual tabloid published by the party-owned People’s Daily,
said that public indignation over the Zhu Ling case was largely the result
of poor communication by the authorities. But the editorial acknowledged
that the truly powerful can influence the criminal justice system by
insisting that Ms. Sun’s family “was not distinguished enough” to have
such sway.
The accused has remained out of public view these past two decades, although
after her name began to spread across the ether in 2005, she posted a brief
online defense, saying she was innocent and in fact also a victim because
of the unfounded accusations against her. “On the Internet, even though
everyone is just a virtual ID, one should still be rational, objective and
responsible for their own words and actions,” she wrote.
The case has provided a fascinating showcase for the power of the Internet.
It was in early 1995, after Ms. Zhu’s illness stumped doctors at one of
Beijing’s premier hospitals, that a desperate high school classmate posted
a cry for help on one of the few wired computer terminals then available in
China. Amid the hundreds of replies from Western medical experts, most
correctly identified the syndrome as thallium poisoning and suggested the
antidote — a commercial dye known as Prussian Blue .
The information saved Ms. Zhu’s life, but she remains severely disabled,
her aging parents forced to tend to her round the clock. Despite the
authorities’ refusal to reopen the investigation, her 72-year-old mother,
Zhu Mingxin, has said she is not willing to give up. "In the prime of her
youth she nearly lost her life and she's been miserable ever since," she
told China National Radio earlier this week. “I hate the perpetrator."
In recent years, the family has been receiving help from an American-based
nonprofit that has been raising money and reminding people that the crime
remains unsolved.
The renewed focus on her case has prompted a flood of contributions that
recently surpassed $520,000. He Qing, a volunteer with the group, the Help
Zhu Ling Foundation, has been moved by the response as well as the
frustration expressed online.
“It’s the lack of justice, the unfairness and the feeling that people with
privilege can get away with anything,” said Ms. He, an automotive engineer
from China who now lives in Michigan. “People have just had enough.”
Mia Li and Sue-Lin Wong contributed research.
1990s Poisoning Case Re-emerges, Unleashing Fresh Chinese Fury
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 10, 2013
BEIJING — The mysterious illness began with crippling stomach pain,
followed by blurry vision and sudden hair loss. By the time Zhu Ling, a
talented musician and chemistry student at one of China’s top universities,
emerged from a coma weeks later, she was partially paralyzed and nearly
blind, her faculties reduced to those of a child.
Enlarge This Image
The Help Zhu Ling Foundation
An undated photo of Zhu Ling, who was a 19-year-old student at one of China
’s top universities when she was poisoned.
The 19-year-old sophomore, doctors later determined, had been intentionally
poisoned with thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal sometimes used in Chinese
rat poison. A culprit was never found, though suspicions fell on a roommate
from a well-connected family who was questioned by the police but then
released.
Now, nearly two decades after Ms. Zhu was poisoned, with her name forgotten
by all but a determined band of supporters, her case has ricocheted back
into public consciousness , electrifying the nation with allegations of a
bungled investigation and uncomfortable questions about the power of China’
s political elite in a society where justice remains elusive.
In recent days, Chinese social media has been consumed by the case despite
an earlier effort to quash the conversation through aggressive censorship, a
move that only fueled wider interest — and greater fury. “Nineteen years
ago, the young Zhu Ling was poisoned,” Yao Chen, a film star with 45
million followers, wrote on China’s equivalent of Twitter. “Nineteen years
later, this name has again been poisoned.”
On Monday, an online petition was submitted to the White House’s “We the
People” platform imploring the American government to intervene in the case
. The petition , which had drawn more than 143,000 signatures by Friday,
calls on the Obama administration to deport to China the primary suspect,
despite a lack of evidence that she even lives in the United States.
“There was always anger and frustration over this case but it’s exploding
right now,” said John Aldis, who has followed Ms. Zhu’s plight since his
years as a doctor at the American Embassy in Beijing during the 1990s. “A
new generation of Chinese young people are realizing that a terrible
injustice was done, and they want their voices to be heard.”
The renewed interest was inspired by a lurid murder last month in Shanghai,
where a medical student at the prestigious Fudan University was accused of
spiking the water of his roommate with a toxic chemical. The police said the
student, who has been charged with intentional homicide, was driven by a
grudge described as “trivial.”
What began as an online conversation about the pressures of China’s cut-
throat education system and the dearth of mental health services, gave way
to discussion of other poisoning cases in China, many of them by students
consumed with jealousy.
But it was the attempted murder of Zhu Ling — and the notion that the
perpetrator was given a free pass because of her political pedigree — that
dominated the discussion. Those suspicions tapped into the widely held
belief that well-placed Communist Party officials and their relatives are
above the law.
“We want what we’ve always wanted — truth and justice,” Wu Chengzhi, Ms.
Zhu’s father, said in a brief phone interview.
Although the narrative of the case is riddled with unanswered questions and
unsubstantiated allegations, Ms. Zhu’s family and supporters have latched
on to the one known fact: that Ms. Zhu’s roommate at Tsinghua University,
Sun Wei, had access to thallium and was questioned by the police, but was
quickly released, according to accounts in the state media.
The police say they lacked evidence for an arrest. Critics have speculated
without any proof that Ms. Sun’s grandfather, a senior official in the
decades after the Communists came to power, and another relative, a former
vice mayor of Beijing, had made the problem go away. As for a possible
motive, they suggest Ms. Sun was envious of the victim’s beauty, and her
musical and academic achievements.
Ms. Zhu’s friends say crucial evidence from her dorm room disappeared
before the police began their investigation. According to Mr. Wu, the father
, investigators closed the case in 1998 but did not tell the family for
nearly a decade.
“If the investigation re-opens, there should also be an investigation of
police wrongdoings and who tried to intervene with the original
investigation,” said Zhang Jie, a lawyer who represents Ms. Zhu’s family.
Despite the mounting pressure, the authorities are not keen to revisit the
matter. On Wednesday, in a rare public response to media inquiries, the
Beijing Public Security Bureau defended its investigation but said the
passage of time and paucity of evidence limited its ability to reopen the
case. The statement also rejected accusations that its inquiry had been
influenced by outsiders. “The dedicated investigation team worked according
to law, and the investigation was never compromised or interfered with in
any way,” it said.
But in one encouraging sign for Zhu Ling’s supporters, the topic has been
unblocked on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog service, suggesting
that high-level officials have decided that suppressing the controversy was
counterproductive.
Still, the case has become something of a public relations challenge for
China’s new leadership. In the five months since he was appointed Communist
Party secretary, Xi Jinping has been trying to address rampant public
cynicism by attacking official corruption and the abuse of power, although
most of those efforts have so far been widely viewed as superficial.
In one especially ham-handed attempt to grapple with the controversy, Global
Times, a bilingual tabloid published by the party-owned People’s Daily,
said that public indignation over the Zhu Ling case was largely the result
of poor communication by the authorities. But the editorial acknowledged
that the truly powerful can influence the criminal justice system by
insisting that Ms. Sun’s family “was not distinguished enough” to have
such sway.
The accused has remained out of public view these past two decades, although
after her name began to spread across the ether in 2005, she posted a brief
online defense, saying she was innocent and in fact also a victim because
of the unfounded accusations against her. “On the Internet, even though
everyone is just a virtual ID, one should still be rational, objective and
responsible for their own words and actions,” she wrote.
The case has provided a fascinating showcase for the power of the Internet.
It was in early 1995, after Ms. Zhu’s illness stumped doctors at one of
Beijing’s premier hospitals, that a desperate high school classmate posted
a cry for help on one of the few wired computer terminals then available in
China. Amid the hundreds of replies from Western medical experts, most
correctly identified the syndrome as thallium poisoning and suggested the
antidote — a commercial dye known as Prussian Blue .
The information saved Ms. Zhu’s life, but she remains severely disabled,
her aging parents forced to tend to her round the clock. Despite the
authorities’ refusal to reopen the investigation, her 72-year-old mother,
Zhu Mingxin, has said she is not willing to give up. "In the prime of her
youth she nearly lost her life and she's been miserable ever since," she
told China National Radio earlier this week. “I hate the perpetrator."
In recent years, the family has been receiving help from an American-based
nonprofit that has been raising money and reminding people that the crime
remains unsolved.
The renewed focus on her case has prompted a flood of contributions that
recently surpassed $520,000. He Qing, a volunteer with the group, the Help
Zhu Ling Foundation, has been moved by the response as well as the
frustration expressed online.
“It’s the lack of justice, the unfairness and the feeling that people with
privilege can get away with anything,” said Ms. He, an automotive engineer
from China who now lives in Michigan. “People have just had enough.”
Mia Li and Sue-Lin Wong contributed research.
