China to 'kill fewer, kill
carefully' By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Stunned by the large number of
executions carried out each year, Chinese legal
experts and lawyers have joined human-rights
advocates in attacking the Middle Kingdom's system
of capital punishment as arbitrary and calling for
swift changes to judicial process.
Authorities have responded with cautious
strides toward reforming China's notorious system
of capital punishment. It is doing that in
part
by announcing changes in court procedures that are
expected to reduce the number of executions by
20-30%, human-rights advocates said.
China, which keeps the number of people it
executes under wraps, is believed to have carried
out about 8,000 executions in 2005, said Liu
Renwen, a scholar at the Law Institute of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Amnesty International (AI) documented at
least 3,400 executions in 2004 - 90% of the total
of capital punishments recorded around the world -
but workers in the human-rights lobby said they
believe the actual number to be higher.
Liu and AI belong to a growing lobby of
opponents of the death penalty in China, fighting
to stop its arbitrary use and reform the judicial
system. China has come under fire for its
widespread use of torture to extract confessions
and achieve high rates of convictions in courts.
Meanwhile, a United Nations special
investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, who was
granted access to Chinese detention centers after
nearly a decade of negotiations, has criticized
the heavy reliance on confessions, saying it
encouraged the use of torture.
The most
common methods, Nowak reported, were beatings with
fists, sticks and electric batons. Prisoners also
said they had been burned with cigarettes, beaten
by fellow inmates under guard instructions and
submersed in water or sewage. Many detainees were
held for long periods in extreme positions and
death-row inmates were kept constantly shackled or
handcuffed.
Such systematic abuse was
designed to break the will of detainees until they
confessed, he concluded. "The criminal-justice
system is focused on admission of culpability, and
the role of obtaining confessions continues to be
central to successful prosecutions," Nowak wrote
in his report.
As special rapporteur and
expert mandated by the UN High Commission on Human
Rights, Nowak concluded that "torture, though on
the decline - particularly in urban areas -
remains widespread in China''.
Forced
confessions have long been denounced by
legal-rights advocates who say they lead to
arbitrary rulings by provincial judges and to the
high number of death sentences.
Legal
scholar Liu said provincial courts often resort to
arbitrary sentencing because they face political
pressure to control crime rates within their legal
domains. "Local governments think it [the death
penalty] is a good tool to control public
security. They would be loath to see such power
being taken away from them," he told foreign
correspondents in Beijing.
Political
pressure intensifies particularly during the
periodic Yan Da (Strike Hard) campaigns against
crime. Initiated in 1983 by China's late paramount
leader Deng Xiaoping to counter the downsides of
the country's opening to the outside world, Yan Da
campaigns were revived in 1996 by then-president
Jiang Zemin.
During these crackdowns,
legal institutions are required to speed up normal
legal procedures to meet quotas for solved crimes.
Death sentences are carried out swiftly by a
bullet to the back of the head.
Since the
first Strike Hard campaign in 1983, the number of
crimes punishable by death has doubled from 32 to
68, including economic offences such as smuggling,
tax evasion and embezzlement.
Since China
signed the UN International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights in 1998, the lobby against the
death penalty has grown larger, attracting legal
scholars, lawyers and rights advocates.
Recent public outcry over several
miscarriages of justice, involving the death
penalty and the use of torture in prisons and
detention centers, has strengthened the hand of
reformers.
In one sensational case, a man
accused of killing his wife was released from
prison after 11 years, after the discovery that
his wife was living with another man. The case
sparked calls from legal experts to outlaw
confessions gained through torture. Under the
appeal to "kill fewer, kill carefully", lawyers
and scholars campaigned for a central review of
all death penalties and reform of court
procedures.
Even critics of the death
penalty are aware that reform in China must go
beyond arbitrary rulings. Surveys show that, for
cultural and historical reasons, the majority of
Chinese public support the use of death sentence
as a deterrent against crimes.
Many people
still believe in the old principle that "a life is
paid with another life". So while impetus for
reform of the capital-punishment system is
growing, China is not likely to discontinue the
use of the death penalty.
During the March
annual legislative session of parliament, the
government ruled out the abolition of the death
penalty, according to people who attended.
Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme
People's Court, told legislators that grave
economic crimes would still be punished by death.
He announced, however, that a series of new
measures would be implemented to avoid wrongful
executions.
As a first step, the apex
court is taking back the final review of all death
penalty cases from the provincial courts.
Moreover, when hearing death sentence trials for a
second time, Chinese courts will begin open court
sessions, allowing prosecutors, judges and defense
lawyers to meet face-to-face.
"As of July
1, 2006, all second-instance trials of
death-sentence cases shall be heard in open
court," Xiao, who is also the country's chief
judge, said at a press conference.
But to
regain control of the final decision in death
sentences, the central government should first
outlaw the use of evidence gained through torture,
legal experts warn, or it will face difficulty in
rightfully handling the reviews.
"Without
discarding the use of such evidence, we cannot
expect to achieve our goal of curbing wrongful
executions," said Cai Zhang, president of the
Jilin province high court.
