The Li Family Massacre

I am Washington Lee, also known by my Chinese name Qiguan Li. I was among the first cohort of college students admitted through the national entrance examination following the conclusion of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, which spanned over a decade. We were lauded by the Chinese populace as God's favored progeny. However, due to my staunch advocacy for democracy, vocal opposition to autocracy, impassioned calls for transparency, and proactive involvement in reform initiatives, alongside my affinity for foreign languages and translation, I frequently sought guidance from international experts on translation matters. Tragically, I became the target of a brutal investigation by the CCP, accused of being a foreign agent.

At the university, the CCP arranged for Zhang Xun, a female student in the English department in her early twenties, to live with the foreign teacher, Pomponio, to monitor my interactions with foreign experts. In China, students are prohibited from forming romantic relationships with foreign teachers. In my hometown, the CCP deployed an embroidery agent named Sun Miaoying to seduce both me and my landlord's relative, who was considered an enemy by the CCP. They promised Sun that her son would be admitted to a technical secondary school and obtain Shanghai residency in exchange for her cooperation. Sun, an uneducated woman who shamelessly worshipped money, spoke vulgarly and behaved crudely. When she did not receive the benefits she expected, she cursed the village secretary, Chen Xuexiang, in the street with the most filthy and vulgar language. She even used sexual bribery in her attempt to secure the lucrative position of embroidery agent. Sun asked me to teach her son English, but after her attempts at seduction, I ceased all interaction with her. Even after her son was admitted to the school, I did not accept her thank-you dinner. Although both Sun and Zhang Xun were informants for the CCP, the difference is that Sun was a criminal who owed blood debts to innocent people. Some of my relatives and friends were killed by the CCP based on false information she provided.

Simultaneously, the CCP conducted brutal and inhumane investigations into my family and relatives. This ordeal resulted not only in the loss of many of my own family members and relatives but also claimed the lives of numerous individuals on my wife’s side. My father’s younger sister married a capitalist who has long been imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party. In an attempt to uncover evidence of espionage within our families, the CCP tasked my aunt’s daughter-in-law and Liu Mei, the wife of A Dong, owner of Limin Chinese Bookstore in Los Angeles, to engage in button business with me. I traveled to China to explore sourcing opportunities and then visited Liu’s button company in Los Angeles to discuss a potential purchase order, which unfortunately never materialized. Moreover, to obtain additional button samples, my cousin-in-law suggested a trip from Shanghai to a button factory in Linhai City, Zhejiang Province. However, upon our arrival, the CCP ordered my younger cousin to urgently return from the Wuzhen Garment Factory in Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province, to Shanghai to find his wife. In fact, after I got the sample at the button factory, I immediately went to the airport to leave Zhejiang to avoid the suspicion that my cousin-in-law and I were having an extramarital affair. Despite no evidence of espionage, a vibrant young lady tragically succumbed to poisoning by the CCP, purportedly due to cancer. Subsequently, my aunt also met a similar fate, allegedly from cardiovascular disease. This endeavor yielded no business transactions, only wasted efforts, time, and airfare. My mother’s niece married the son of a landlord and was also targeted for elimination by the CCP. My younger brother and my uncle’s daughter-in-law were ordered by the CCP to assist in investigating the alleged spy relationship between me and my cousin-in-law. When this proved ineffective, the CCP placed them in my brother's car and sank them in the Central River of Chenhang Town, my hometown. The son of the landlord, a sturdy middle-aged man, was soon killed by the CCP, purportedly due to cancer. My wife’s natal family was also devastated by CCP investigations. Her brother was purportedly poisoned to death by the CCP under the pretext of cancer, while her sister in-law was coerced into serving as a secret informant for the CCP and assigned a male agent to contact her. Since she could not provide useful information, the CCP agent tricked her into going out at night and poisoned her to death on the road. My father's uncle, Xing Baogen, served as the local governor-Baozhang during the Kuomintang rule. The CCP sought to uncover the alleged superior-subordinate espionage relationship between my family and the Xing family. They enlisted the help of my second younger uncle Li Yinbiao’s family in the investigation, as my second uncle’s brother-in-law Hu Fuquan was the mayor of Chenhang Town after the CCP came to power, and my younger cousin Li Jinchang and Xing Baogen's son worked at the same Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited. When they failed to find evidence of espionage, the CCP not only poisoned three individuals but also killed Li Jinchang’s younger sister, Li Jinxiu, who had moved out after marriage. My youngest uncle, Li Linxin, served as the director of the Duhang Town Supply and Marketing Cooperative. The CCP tasked him with investigating the alleged espionage relationship between me and the owner of a private hotel in Duhang Town, whose granddaughter was learning English from me to visit relatives in San Francisco, USA. When no evidence was found, the CCP resorted to old tactics, first killing his wife and then arranging for a woman to live with him. Despite their efforts, the CCP failed to obtain any evidence and subsequently killed my uncle. Additionally, all members of our cadre in Lixiang Village were coerced by the CCP to assist in the spy case investigation. When no evidence was found, they were killed one by one, including my younger uncle Li Xingfu, the party branch secretary of Lixiang Village, Chen Xuexiang, the later party branch secretary of Lixiang Village, and Li Yuxiang, the public security officer of Lixiang Village. Other victims included Li Shungen, the captain of the Lijiatang production team in Lixiang Village, where I lived, and his son-in-law Li Fuquan, as well as my neighbors Li Dequan, director of the Shanghai County Education Bureau office, and his sister Li Guofang. Li Dequan originally worked in a remote primary school in Chenhang Town. However, in order to allow him to monitor my father, my younger brother, and I, who worked at Chenhang Town Primary School and Sanlin Town High School, the CCP broke the rules of officialdom and promoted him to several levels, making him an education bureau leader that can oversee all schools in Shanghai County. But when he failed to provide evidence of espionage, he was lured into a trap by a girl, dismissed from his post, demoted to an ordinary worker in the school-run factory, and poisoned to death soon after. These are just some of the tragic losses that the Li family suffered due to the actions of the CCP because Li Village was forcibly demolished by the CCP (they demolished two two-story houses and two bungalows that I had devoted my life to without signing an agreement with me, and they have not returned these assets to me until now), coupled with the strong interference from the CCP, I have been unable to contact many relatives and friends of the Li family.

For many years, I have been campaigning to "End the Chinese Communist Tyranny, Revive the Chinese Civilization," doing my part to end the terrorist regime and promote Chinese democracy. I am also working hard to build a memorial park for my relatives, friends, mentors, students, and business partners who were massacred by the CCP, as well as for the passengers and crew members who died in the Busan air crash and Dalian air crash caused by the CCP, and a memorial for the many victims of the Li family to commemorate the souls of those who died unjustly and to comfort the families of the deceased. But in China, under the iron curtain of the Chinese Communist Party's dictatorship, it is only wishful thinking to realize this humble wish. On June 4, 1989, the Chinese Communist Party dispatched tanks, machine guns, and soldiers with live ammunition to carry out a bloody suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. However, Chi Haotian, the Chinese Communist Minister of Defense who personally directed this crackdown, shamelessly said at the United Nations International Human Rights Day Conference on December 10, 1996: "I can tell you responsibly and seriously that at that time, No one died in Tiananmen Square.” However, Tiananmen mothers like Xu Jue continue to demand justice from the Chinese Communist regime for their children. Xu Jue’s son Wu Xiangdong was shot dead by a CCP machine gun on the bloody night of June 3rd. After that, she and her husband Wu Xuehan posted written testimonies all over Beijing, exposing the lie that the CCP "did not kill anyone during the June Fourth Incident." Both of them were geological prospectors, had the strong bodies necessary for their profession, and were in their prime years. However, Wu Xuehan was poisoned to death by the CCP at the age of 55. Xu Jue was diagnosed with liver cancer by the CCP and needed to pay a huge fee for a liver transplant, but she died shortly after the operation. I am very convinced that the CCP gave her a bad liver to squeeze more money out of her because the same thing happened to our family. My wife Li Fengxian, who was only in her 40s at the time, and her sister Li Yuexian, who was about the same age, were both killed by the CCP on the grounds of hepatitis. Then the CCP continued to use hepatitis as a guise to ask my wife’s nephew Li Xinguo to spend more than 300,000 yuan for a liver transplant (this is a huge sum of money in China. Former CCP Prime Minister Li Keqiang once admitted that more than 600 million people in China have a monthly income of only 1,000 yuan, which is 140 US dollars), and her nephew died after undergoing a liver transplant. The truth is that the CCP exchanged a diseased liver for this healthy young man’s good liver. This not only cost him his young life but also defrauded our family of a large amount of money. What’s even crueler is that when Xu Jue’s youngest son, Wu Weidong, buried his mother, the CCP did not allow him to engrave any words on the tombstone of his mother, who bravely fought against the CCP, so Xu Jue’s tombstone was just a stone slab without words.

To quash the flame of democracy in China, the CCP employs every means to persecute insightful advocates of democracy and critics of the regime. While alive, these individuals faced relentless persecution, including efforts to dismantle their families. Even in death, the CCP bars commemorations, demonstrating its ruthless suppression of dissent. Xu Jiatun, a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and director of Xinhua News Agency's Hong Kong Branch, fled to the United States on April 30, 1990, fearing CCP persecution. He holds the distinction of being the highest-ranking official to seek refuge overseas since the CCP's rise to power in 1949. Despite expressing admiration for CCP leaders like Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping and refraining from criticizing the CCP's current politics to secure permission to return, his numerous requests were callously denied. Only in death did the CCP allow his ashes to return to China, but forbade any tribute. Liu Binyan, a Chinese writer, journalist, and political dissident, tirelessly exposed corruption within Chinese officialdom and demanded reforms from the CCP. Following the June 4th Incident in 1989, he openly opposed the armed suppression by the Chinese People's Liberation Army and declared his exile overseas. From then on, he was never allowed to return to the country. Despite pleading to return to China in personal letters to Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao during his final years, he was met with silence. Liu Binyan succumbed to colon cancer on December 5, 2005, at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Although his ashes were interred in Tianshan Cemetery in Beijing, the CCP denied his family the right to inscribe his self-penned epitaph on his tombstone: "The Chinese man who lies here has done what he should have done and said what he should have said."

It is my unshirkable responsibility to expose the Chinese Communist Party's egregious atrocities, shedding light on their indiscriminate killing of innocent individuals and advocating for justice on behalf of the victims. My enduring aspiration has been to establish a memorial park and monument where the souls of those unjustly taken can be mourned and honored. Today, the "Li Family Massacre Memorial" has finally been completed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, USA. This marks an important milestone in my quest for justice for the victims. Therefore, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to democracy, a priceless treasure of universal significance, and to the core values of America, as articulated by the Founding Fathers: "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I am also thankful for Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a venerable institution known for a century of compassionate service in the funeral industry, and to all the generous souls who have helped make this long-cherished dream a reality.

May the beacon of democracy continue to shine ever brighter, illuminating the path to justice and freedom for all humanity.

Qiguan Li (Washington Lee)

May 15, 2024

LI FAMILY MASSACRE MEMORIAL

I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST BATCH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS TO PASS THE COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION IN 1977, AFTER THE END OF CHINA'S UNPRECEDENTED 10-YEAR CULTURAL REVOLUTION. HOWEVER, I WAS BRUTALLY INVESTIGATED BY THE CCP AS A FOREIGN AGENT DUE TO MY FREQUENT PROMOTION OF THE CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY AND ADVOCATING STRONGLY FOR FREEDOM, JUSTICE, REFORM, AND OPENING UP. I ESPECIALLY COLLABORATED WITH ENTERPRISES IN SHANGHAI TO CARRY OUT REFORM EXPERIMENTS. ADDITIONALLY, I HAVE A PROFOUND LOVE FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND TRANSLATION, ENGAGING FREQUENTLY IN DISCUSSIONS ABOUT TRANSLATION ISSUES WITH FOREIGN EXPERTS. THE CCP KILLED MY FATHER, LI QIUSHENG, MOTHER, CHEN LINJUAN, WIFE, LI FENGXIAN, YOUNGER BROTHER, LI MINGZHE, AND NUMEROUS MEMBERS OF THE LI FAMILY, RESULTING IN THE HEINOUS MASSACRE OF THE LI FAMILY. THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED TO HONORING AND COMMEMORATING THE VICTIMS OF THE LI FAMILY.

QIGUAN LI (WASHINGTON LEE)

SHANGHAI, CHINA

謹紀念被中共屠殺的大批李氏家族成員

李奇觀

中國上海

2024/05/15