New York Police reported that a dissident legal professor who was imprisoned in China for two years after taking part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, was assassinated on Monday in his law firm’s office in New York, where he had sought asylum in the United States.
Li Jinjin, 66, was stabbed to death in the city where he had long worked as an immigration lawyer, even as he continued to speak out publicly in support of the many people imprisoned or slain by Chinese authorities throughout the country’s democratic struggle.
His assassination has resulted in an arrest. Xiaoning Zhang, 25, was arrested and charged with murder, according to police. It wasn’t clear when she’d be arraigned or if she’d hired an attorney right away.
The death may have been motivated by Li’s refusal to take Zhang on as a client, according to Chuang Chuang Chen, the CEO of the China Democracy Party, and lawyer Wei Zhu, a friend of Li’s.
Zhang arrived in the United States in August on an F-1 student visa to attend school in Los Angeles, according to Chen.
In recent years, news organisations have frequently mentioned Li, who also went by the first name Jim, for insight or opinion on the Chinese dissident community or on Sino-Western relations. He also defended several Chinese expats in the United States who were designated fugitives by that country as an immigration lawyer.
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