"The extraordinary official surveillance and restrictions imposed on my family members who remain in our home village reportedly have started to abate," Chen said in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

"The county police have even begun to make amends, offering to pay my brother for some of the furniture they broke during the vengeful attack on his family after they discovered my escape," he wrote.

Chen was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2006 after exposing abuses in China's one-child policy and then placed under house arrest in the village of Shandong upon his release in September 2010.

The 40-year-old activist's escape from house arrest and his dramatic arrival at the US embassy in Beijing in April highlighted China's long-criticized human rights record.

It also sparked a diplomatic incident just as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting the Communist country, and Chen was eventually given notice to pack up his belongings and prepare for departure to New York, arriving in the city on May 19.

In his article, Chen calls for the release of his nephew Chen Kegui, whom he says was detained on April 26 for defending himself against 30 armed thugs linked to "local officials," during a raid on the family's farmhouse.

Police, he said, charged Chen Kegui with attempted murder for wounding three of the attackers with a kitchen knife.

"If instead of being investigated for their misdeeds, local authorities are allowed to prosecute Kegui, this will send a message to the world that Chinese officials are above the law," Chen concluded.

Tian Shuhan, 21, was found dead in the hallway of a teacher's dormitory building at her university in central China's Henan province earlier this month, Henan's Minsheng TV reported.

Police told Minsheng the wounds, including six to her neck and five to her legs, were self-inflicted and stemmed from the extreme mental pressure she was facing during ongoing exams.

But her family said Tian showed no emotional distress ahead of her death -- and questioned how she could have stabbed herself 13 times.

The family is demanding a further investigation and wants to know why she was in the teacher's dormitory, the report said.

Police in Henan's Zhongmou county refused to comment on the case when contacted by AFP. Calls to the university went unanswered Thursday.

The television report sparked protests on China's popular microblogs. "The police are garbage, calling it a suicide is the easiest way to solve the case," posted one user.

"This girl really had to be strong, she was not only brave enough to die, she was also brave enough to die slowly, cut-by-cut," said another posting.

"This is really a creative way to commit suicide. You police can believe this, but damn it, I don't believe."

The case comes after Chinese authorities said the death of leading dissident Li Wangyang -- who served 22 years in prison following the quelling of the 1989 Tiananmen Democracy protests -- was suicide, sparking uproar among activists.

Li, who was blind, nearly deaf and barely able to walk, was found hanging by a bandage from the windowsill of his hospital ward, with both feet on the ground.

He died days after an interview with Hong Kong journalists in which he vowed to continue to fight for democracy in China.