One afternoon, while playing hide-and-seek, we looked through a crack in the locked warehouse door and saw two feet dangling in the air, and at the same time smelled the reek of insecticide: a middle-aged man was hanging from the rafters. Some said he had hanged himself, and others said he had been strung up after dying from a beating. The cause of such a death, the responsibility for such a death—these were not issues that would warrant an investigation. If someone died while in custody, it was written off as “committing suicide for fear of punishment” and “separating oneself from the
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