A video showing a violent 20-minute attack on a prisoner in a detention house in Fujian Province has been erased. The prisoner, Wen Longhui, died after the assault.

Five relatives of Wen, 20, including his father and uncle, say they saw the security video which showed four prisoners savagely attacking a man on a bed with his head covered by a black cloth, at the Fuzhou No. 2 Detention House in the southern province on March 24, Eastday.com reported today.

The relatives said they saw the victim, whom they believe was Wen, collapse after the 20-minute beating. The attackers tried to give him artificial respiration, sounded the alarm and called for warders, shouting: "It's become serious". But on the next day when the relatives went to view the video again none of this was to be seen. The video just had Wen's cries for help.

The detention house maintains that there was no attack and Wen died after falling out of his bed.

An autopsy report is yet to be released.

Prosecutors in neighboring Guangdong Province are investigating another death in custody after 35-year-old Liu Yushan died in a prison in Foshan City on March 31.

The prison's governor said on Wednesday that he died suddenly, possibly due to heart disease, while his family says it saw evidence that he had been beaten to death.

Police across the country have been ordered to take part in a three-month campaign to combat the abuse of prisoners in Chinese jails, the Ministry of Public Security said on March 30, one day before Liu's death, following a series of accusations of torture and an uproar over suspicious inmate deaths.

(Shanghai Daily April 10, 2009)