BEIJING — Li Wangyang, one of China’s longest-serving political prisoners, was not the kind of man to go down without a fight. After serving 11 years in prison for organizing workers during the pro-democracy protests of 1989, he gained his freedom and promptly went on a hunger strike. His goal was to shame the government into providing restitution and the medical care he required after successive beatings left him nearly blind and deaf.

The authorities responded by throwing him in jail for another decade.

So Chinese activists were stunned this week to learn that Mr. Li, 62, who was enjoying his first year of freedom, had supposedly taken his own life. According to the police in Hunan Province, Mr. Li hanged himself on Wednesday morning in the hospital room where he had been living since his release from jail. They say he strung a cotton bandage around his neck and tied it to a steel grill that covered the window near his bed.

Friends and family members have questioned the authorities’ version of events, saying Mr. Li was far too feisty to bow out of the fight for political reform. Shortly before his death, he gave interviews to French radio and a Hong Kong television station in which he vowed to keep agitating for an end to single-party rule. “Each ordinary man has a responsibility for democracy, for the well-being of the nation,” he said, nearly spitting with indignation.