According to a statement posted this week on the court website of the city of Wenzhou—known for its thriving private sector and informal banking networks—39-year old Lin Haiyan started soliciting funds in 2007, promising investors high returns at low risk. The scheme unraveled in October 2011, with Ms. Lin owing her private backers 428 million yuan, it said.

[…] Informal sources of credit have long been the lifeblood of China’s small private firms that typically can’t access loans or other forms of finances from the country’s formal financial institutions. But gathering funds to invest without regulatory approval is a legal gray area, and authorities sometimes crack down hard when investors lose money.

[…] As of the end of April, 1,449 people had been “seriously punished”–a designation that includes the death penalty and more than five years imprisonment—for illegal fundraising since 2011, said Miao Youshui, a senior judge on the People’s Supreme Court, China’s highest judicial body, at a recent news conference. In total, 4,170 people were convicted over the same period for similar economic crimes, he said. [Source]

Lin’s case quickly attracted comparison with that of Wu Ying, a young entrepreneur from Zhejiang whose death sentence was effectively reduced to life imprisonment last year following a public backlash. Wu’s supporters argued that capital punishment would have been disproportionate to her non-violent crime, but this principle is unevenly accepted: execution of corrupt officials, like that of violent offenders, enjoys considerable public support in China.

Amnesty International reported in April that China remains the clear world leader in executions, with thousands believed to have been carried out last year. The exact number is deemed a state secret.

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Post tags: capital punishment, death penalty, execution, fraud, underground bank, wenzhou, Wu Ying
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Liu Shihui, a lawyer from Inner Mongolia now living in Guangzhou, and Chengdu-based activist Chen Yunfei told the Post they were stopped by plainclothes state security officials on a road leading to Lin’s grave. They said they had been ruffed up and insulted by the plainclothes officials, who also deleted photos on their phones.

“Last year, I went to the grave and no one stopped me,” said Chen.

“This year it seems to have become a sensitive issue. They are trying to tarnish Xi Jingping’s constitutional Chinese dream,” he said, referring to a slogan by the new president that stirred hope among liberals for an unprecedented enforcement of rights guaranteed in the constitution.

[…] About a hundred people managed to get to the grave site, where they were met by just as many police officers, urban management officials and plainclothes state police, said 40-year-old Chen Zongyao from Wenzhou. “We were allowed to light incense, but not allowed to speak,” he said. “We are trying to go up to the grave again tomorrow.”

Scene at Lin Zhao’s grave in Suzhou today RT @wbchczy 四二九苏州灵岩山.奠林昭现场 twitter.com/wbchczy/status…

— Joshua Rosenzweig (@siweiluozi) April 29, 2013

Scores of Chinese visited dissident Lin Zhao’s tomb today on the anniversary of her death, w/ police loitering nearby twitter.com/Yuxin_Gao/stat…

— Helen Gao (@Yuxin_Gao) April 29, 2013

At The Washington Post (via Austin Ramzy), Philip Pan tells Lin’s story through that of filmmaker Hu Jie in an extract from his book, Out of Mao’s Shadow.

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Post tags: Cultural Revolution, dissidents, execution, history, Lin Zhao, Mao era, writers
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Only 21 of the world’s countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012 – the same number as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier in 2003.

In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide, two more than in 2011. At least 1,722 newly imposed death sentences in 58 countries could be confirmed, compared to 1,923 in 63 countries the year before.

But these figures do not include the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes were carried out in China, where the numbers are kept secret.

China aside, the Amnesty International report notes that the Asia Pacific region as a whole saw “disappointing setbacks” towards their goal of global abolishment: India saw its first execution since 2004, Japan executed seven people after a nearly two-year hiatus, and Pakistan also resumed use of  the death penalty. From The Guardian:

[...A] number of countries in Asia Pacific that had not carried executions for a number of years did so in 2012, such as India, which executed one person, Japan seven, Pakistan one and Gambia nine.

“The regression we saw in some countries this year was disappointing, but it does not reverse the worldwide trend against using the death penalty. In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary general.

The Supreme People’s Court claims that use of the death penalty in China has significantly decreased since a regulation was enacted in 2007 requiring each case to be reviewed individually, and human rights advocacy group Dui Hua’s estimates support that assertion, showing 6,500 in 2007 and 4,000 in 2011. While enforced regulation may continue to reduce the use of capital punishment in China, The South China Morning Post quotes a criminal law expert who believes that shifting public support will be more difficult:

Hao Xingwang, a criminal law expert at Beijing’s Renmin University, believed that the number of executions would likely continue to fall as Beijing tightens its regulations. Public support for the death penalty, however, would remain strong for some years, he said.

“Most Chinese people believe the death penalty is necessary, but don’t really understand the risks and drawbacks. The concept of an eye-for-an-eye has been well established since ancient times and will take a long time to change,” Hao said.

Also see infographics and a concise data summary of the Amnesty International report, via The Guardian. For more on the death penalty in China, see prior CDT coverage.

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Post tags: Amnesty International, death penalty, execution, legal system
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Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

Though a rumored live broadcast of the actual executions failed to materialize, the TV coverage attracted heavy criticism. “It’s hard to see how that spectacle doesn’t violate [the] prohibition on parading condemned in the streets,” tweeted human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig, referring to a 1984 ban introduced to avoid unfavorable foreign media coverage. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented that China had “just wiped away any perception that it was making progress on the death penalty issue.” Within China, reactions to the broadcast were deeply polarized. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

At Bloomberg World View, Adam Minter described the spectacle as a “graphic extension” of a broader political strategy:

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

China’s Global Times recently revealed that authorities had considered killing Naw Kham with a drone strike instead of capturing him. See more on China’s drone programs, and more on the death penalty in China, via CDT.

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Post tags: CCTV, death penalty, diplomacy, drug trafficking, execution, Golden Triangle, human rights watch, Japan, legal system, Mao era, Mekong river, murders, Murong Xuecun, Myanmar, Southeast Asia, territorial disputes, thailand
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When asked by reporters, a spokesman for Guizhou Intermediate Court said: “Are you asking about Bo Xilai case? This is rumour, we have never received this case.”

The China-run Ta Kung Pao newspaper said on its website that Bo’s trial would start on Monday in the southern city of Guiyang and last three days. It cited “well-informed Beijing sources”, but gave no details.

[…] One of Bo’s lawyers, Li Guifang, declined to comment when reached by telephone. Reporters were unable to reach his second lawyer, Wang Zhaofeng, despite repeated telephone calls.

[…] Li Zhuang, a Beijing lawyer who opposed Wang Lijun and Bo for mounting a sweeping crackdown on foes in the name of fighting organised crime, said he also thought it was possible for a Monday hearing.

“I would only say it’s possible, though not totally certain,” Li said.

Comments about Bo’s likely fate from Li Jingtian, executive vice president of the Central Party School, were similarly inconclusive. From Tom Orlik and Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal:

“We have always had severe punishment for corrupt officials,” Mr. Li said during the interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, in response to a question about the fate of Mr. Bo. Such interviews are rare for senior party officials.

He cited the examples of Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, two leaders in the party’s early days who were executed in the 1950s following accusations of embezzlement and other crimes in one of the party’s first anticorruption campaigns.

[…] Mr. Li’s comments don’t mean Mr. Bo is likely to face execution if found guilty. While he cited the case of another execution—that of Cheng Kejie, a former top legislator who was executed in 2000—he also cited the case of Chen Xitong, a former party chief of Beijing convicted on corruption charges in 1998 but released from prison on medical parole in 2006. He also named Chen Liangyu, the former party secretary of Shanghai who was dismissed in 2006 and later sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges.

See more on the Bo case to date, some of it more certain than the above, via CDT.

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Post tags: Bo Xilai, Central Party School, Chen Liangyu, Chen Xitong, corrupt officials, corruption, Davos, death penalty, embezzlement, execution, Guizhou, Li Guifang, Li Zhuang, prison, trials, Wang Lijun, Wang Zhaofeng, World Economic Forum
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Nearly 1.5 million people in China need organ transplants each year, but only 10,000 can get one, according to China’s Health Ministry. Many of those organs are harvested from executed criminals.

Rights groups have accused China of harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their consent – something that Beijing denies.

A trial program has led to more than 1,200 voluntary organ donations since March 2010, China’s official Xinhua news agency cited vice minister of health Huang Jiefu as saying.

When expanded, the ministry’s program, established with the Red Cross Society of China, will mean “less reliance on the use of organ donations from prisoners that have been sentenced to death”, Xinhua said.

Xinhua News has more on the new program and the government’s efforts to reduce its reliance on donations from condemned prisoners:

According to a report by chinanews.com, the project, jointly established by the ministry and the Red Cross Society of China, resulted in more than 100 cases being performed in Guangdong. The province had the most number of donations.

In 2007, China’s State Council, or the Cabinet, issued its first regulations on transplants, banning organizations and individuals from trading human organs.

The 2011 amendments to China’s Criminal Law also introduced three clauses dedicated to organ-related crimes, under which convicted organizers of organ trafficking activities may face fines or prison terms of more than five years.

Under the law, criminals convicted of “forced organ removal, forced organ donation or organ removal from juveniles” could face punishment for homicide.

See also CDT coverage on the issue, one of China’s most infamous human rights violations, and an article from World Affairs from earlier this year which calls out China’s “Organ Donation Nightmare.”

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Ministry of Health, organ harvesting, organ trafficking, organ transplants
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The country’s Ministry of Health has commissioned the Red Cross Society of China to run the nation’s organ donation system and will work with the organization to ensure that all organ procurement and transplantation is done legally, said Wang Haibo, director of the China Organ Transplant Response System Research Center of the Ministry of Health, in an interview featured in the November edition of a World Health Organization journal called the Bulletin (pdf).

[…] Officials in the world’s most populous country have before conceded that China has depended for many years on executed prisoners as its main source of organ supply for ailing citizens. Human-rights groups have criticized the practice, saying that organ harvesting is often forced and influences the speed and number of China’s executions.

[…] The demand for transplants in China is growing, said Mr. Wang in the report. An estimated 1.5 million people in China are in need of organ transplants annually, while only 10,000 receive them, according to government statistics.

In an encouraging sign for the success of the new scheme, a study published in January found that almost three-quarters of Chinese would be willing to donate their own organs after death.

Prisoners aside, China hosts a thriving illegal market. 137 people were arrested in August on suspicion of black market organ trafficking.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Ministry of Health, organ harvesting, organ trafficking, organ transplants, Red Cross, world health organization
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After a serial of trials which first began in April 2009, Wu Ying was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to the Zhejiang Higher People’s Court website.

Legal experts immediately interpreted the sentence as life imprisonment under China’s legal environment.

Wu’s former lawyer Zhang Yanfeng said to media, “She’s been sentenced to life imprisonment, barring any wrongdoing in the next two years.” Zhang said the verdict was expected as provincial high courts are subordinate to the Supreme People’s Court.

New York University law professor Jerome Cohen told The New York Times last month that the SPC’s decision “seems a typical Chinese judicial compromise between what those who call for the death penalty wanted and what Wu’s many supporters, both popular and professional, have called for”. The new suspended death sentence may be an attempt to maintain a similar balance, compared with the lighter sentences Cohen held out as another possible outcome. But human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig described it as “a gutless decision, one that ignores core problems with the case“. Although some supporters expressed satisfaction at Wu’s likely escape from execution, questions about uneven punishment and institutional problems remain. From Chuin-Wei Yap at China Real Time Report:

The case attracted widespread media attention for the severity of the sentence and the long-running campaign in China’s blogosphere to save her.

Many of her supporters wondered aloud why she was facing death when corrupt officials found guilty of similar crimes were often granted lighter sentences ….

For the public that’s kept the issue alive for more than three years, it’s a gratifying conclusion. “It’s not just Wu Ying,” Wang Shuo, a prominent magazine editor, wrote on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo. “If it’s non-violent financial crime, no one should die.”

“Wu Ying was unlucky to run into hole in the legal system,” added another Sina Weibo user writing under the handle Chaoxin Xinzhixing. “When will China’s legal system be more robust, so the public can be convinced?”

Tea Leaf Nation’s survey of Sina Weibo reactions reveals similarly mixed views, and notes that over 3.5 million posts on the subject were culled from search results overnight [Update: TLN reports that many of the culled comments later re-appeared].

Many netizens hailed the result. @杭州恰恰 wrote, “This is…a victory for public opinion! [Responsiveness to] public opinion is progressing!” @洪陈纷纭 wrote: “The power of democracy; the power of Weibo.”

Unfortunately, many netizens felt their victory, if it was theirs at all, was a Pyrrhic one. @Q版温故‘s comment aptly captured netizen sentiment: “No matter what, the result is progress. But this time, the progress is mostly because of the contributions of public opinion, and not law itself.” Instead of law, many commenters perceived realpolitik, hard at work. @闫英士 opined, “The real meaning is this: The death sentence is to save face, the commutation is to quiet citizen rage. But it all has nothing to do with Wu Ying herself, and certainly doesn’t prove the independence of the so-called judiciary.”

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, Jerome cohen, Supreme People's Court, Wang Shuo, Wu Ying, Zhejiang
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In Henan Province, in central China, millions of people have been tuning in every week to watch an extraordinary talk show called Interviews Before Execution, in which a reporter interviews murderers condemned to death. The show ran for just over five years, until it was taken off air on Friday.

Every Monday morning, reporter Ding Yu and her team scoured court reports to find cases to cover on their programme. They had to move quickly, as prisoners in China can be executed seven days after they are sentenced.

To Western eyes the show’s format may seem exploitative, but Ding disagrees.

“Some viewers may consider it cruel to ask a criminal to do an interview when they are about to be executed.

“On the contrary, they want to be heard,” she says.

“Some criminals I interviewed told me: ‘I’m really very glad. I said so many things in my heart to you at this time. In prison, there was never a person I was willing to talk to about past events.’”

An article in The Independent further describing the program mentions that some episodes previously available online have disappeared, and suggests that the BBC coverage may result in the show’s cancellation:

There were question marks yesterday over the future of one of China’s most popular television shows, “Interviews Before Execution”, in which death row prisoners are interviewed shortly before their execution, after its presenter was the subject of a BBC documentary.

The aim of the show, which has been broadcast by Legal TV channel for the past five years and is anchored by Yu Ding, is to highlight the deterrent effect of the death sentence by showing prisoners, sometimes minutes before they are shot or killed by lethal injection.

However, the show may have become the victim of its own success after international TV stations, including the BBC, made documentaries about the programme.

[...]There was confusion last night about the future of the show. News reports yesterday that suggested it was being cancelled because of “internal problems” were denied by officials at Legal TV.

NBC News’ Behind the Wall provides some translated dialogue, and describes the controversy surrounding the show in China. The article also suggests that rumors of the show’s cancellation may not be reliable:

Ding was particularly blunt with one unrepentant interviewee, saying: “I’m glad you got caught. You are a scumbag.” One episode featured a man yelping, “I’m sorry,” and kneeling down on the ground hours before his execution. In another, right before his execution a convict asked her: “Can I shake hands with you?”

[...]“Many people say I’m an angel and devil. I never thought myself as an angel, because it’s work that puts me into contact with these people. I see myself more as a witness,” Ding told the BBC in their 50-minute-long documentary.

[...] A BBC report on Monday claimed the show was taken off the air by Henan TV last Friday. When NBC News reached Henan Legal Channel and asked about it, we were told that was not the case.

The temporary “disappearance” of the show is apparently only making room for a new show, and “Interview before Execution” will come back on air in about six weeks.

However, on the channel’s official website, no links to Ding Yu’s program can be found, while information about other shows is available.

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Post tags: death penalty, execution, television
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… [F]or all the anger at the waste oil merchants and their patrons, few think heavier penalties will make much of an impact on a highly profitable industry. In a lengthy editorial in the Beijing-based Worker’s Daily, a venerable state-owned paper that focuses on economic issues, Cheng Li touched on this perspective:

Gutter oil can’t be eradicated only by adding heavy penalties to the law. There are always plenty of people motivated by profits and willing to battle high waves and winds … [T]his situation can’t be broken by prohibition.

Even the most bloodthirsty of netizens don’t seem to expect any practical results to emerge from the threat of waste oil executions. Indeed, by Wednesday, they’d moved onto new food-related scandals, including news that Chinese Olympians are now raising their own chickens in order to avoid ingesting chemicals used in commercially raised ones. However, at least for one microblogger, this raised a pressing question: “How do you ensure that the chicken feed doesn’t contain prohibited goods, too?”

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Post tags: capital punishment, death penalty, execution, food safety, Supreme People's Court
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Supreme People’s Court Vice-President Zhang Jun, speaking at a conference organised by the China Law Society, said the court had found the quality of capital punishment cases to be worse than expected since authorities ordered all such cases to be reviewed in 2007, according to report by Caixin online [zh].

The biggest problem was with evidence, Zhang said. Law enforcement authorities lacked awareness about the importance of collecting evidence and rules regarding evidence were not applied uniformly.

“For example, [evidence in] murder cases must be subjected to DNA tests,” Zhang said. “But this is not always carried out.”

Investigators also tended to rely too much on verbal testimony as opposed to physical evidence, he said.

See more on the death penalty in China via CDT, including the execution of 15 people in one day in Changsha late last month.

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Post tags: criminal law, death penalty, death sentence, execution, legal system
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On the eve of the 2003 International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, the lives of four female drug dealers in the city of Wuhan were coming to an end. With the permission of the relevant departments and the subjects themselves, on 9pm on 2003 June 24th, this press photographer walked into the Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center and captured their last night spent at the detention center.

The photoseries follows the four women, among the approximately 20 prisoners executed that day, as they ate their final meals, picked out their last outfits, laughed, sang and cried in the company of prison guards and ordinary prisoners before they were led to a public sentencing area and then to the execution grounds. ChinaSMACK also translated a range of comments from Chinese netizens about the photos and the broader social implications of the executions, including the following:

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, drug trafficking, execution, netizens, online bulletin boards
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“In fact, it’s not as complicated as outsiders think. We all use rifles, stand about four meters from the condemned prisoner with a barrel one meter-long, take aim, press the trigger, and that’s that,” Hu told the newspaper.

Most prisoners taken for execution are so terrified they collapse on the ground and cannot stand, Hu said. The exception was an ex-soldier convicted of homicide, he said.

“At the time of execution, the criminals kneel on the ground, but this former soldier actually stood up and ran forward. The result was a moving target that was taken down,” said Hu, himself a former soldier who has worked as a police officer for 19 years.

“These people all deserved what they got for their crimes.”

While international organizations and some Chinese citizens scoff at the decline in the country’s reported executions and seek more transparency, news of two death penalty decisions emerged in the Chinese press last week. A court in northeastern China sentenced three people to death Sunday for arson in connection with a hotel fire which killed 11. And the government sent a signal that it is serious about stamping out shadow lending last week when a Zhejiang court handed down the death penalty to three men convicted of running a fraudulent fundraising scheme in Wenzhou, the epicenter of China’s growing credit woes.

See also previous CDT coverage of the death penalty in China, including the July death sentence given to a China Mobile executive for bribery and the summertime execution of two former vice-Mayors for similar charges.

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, shadow lending, wenzhou
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Capital punishment is rather unique among controversial criminal justice issues in that it has garnered relatively wide-ranging and sustained public debate involving a diversity of viewpoints. One subject that has been raised periodically is whether China is justified in its policy of refusing the public’s right to know how many people it puts to death.

Although the Chinese public is often described as favoring capital punishment, they don’t necessarily favor the secrecy that surrounds it. According to a general survey of Chinese attitudes towards the death penalty conducted in 2007 and 2008, 64 percent of respondents thought the government ought to reveal execution numbers.

Writing in support of this view in a commentary recently published by Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily, Peking University law professor Zhang Qianfan rejects the government’s legal basis for classifying execution statistics as state secrets. Noting heated debate sparked this year by the capital cases of Yao Jiaxin and Li Changkui, Zhang argues that the public cannot speak rationally about abolition, or other topics, with little access to anything but sensational reports. Zhang calls for increased transparency in the number and nature of China’s death sentences.

The public’s thirst for greater transparency appears limited, however: while a clear majority expressed support for it when asked, only a quarter professed a general interest in the issue of capital punishment, with fewer than 3% claiming to be “very interested”. The study, conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (PDF), found that 57.8% claimed to favour the death penalty in general, while 78% supported it specifically for murder.

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Post tags: death penalty, death sentence, execution, public opinion
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The official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief report that Li Lindong was executed Aug. 18. The report, dated Aug. 19, was posted to a regional news website and appeared to not be widely circulated.

The herder, Mergen, who like many Mongols uses just one name, was killed May 10 while he and others were blocking the road through their village to protest noise and pollution produced by coal trucks transiting the grasslands. Police said Li ran over Mergen and then dragged his body for 160 yards (145 meters) before he died.

Li was sentenced in June after a six-hour trial at the Intermediate People’s Court in the region’s Xilingol League. Fellow driver Lu Xiangdong, who had been sitting in the cab of Li’s truck when he drove over the herder, was also convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in prison, state media said earlier.

See also earlier CDT posts on Li’s sentencing, the initial wave of protests, and others since.

Source: China executes man for running over Mongol herder – Associated Press

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Post tags: coal mining, execution, Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia protests
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