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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Public Statement
AI Index: ASA 17/035/2005 (Public)
News Service No: 266
5 October 2005
People’s Republic of China:
Re-instatement of Supreme Court review of death
sentences – a step towards abolition?
In the run-up to the World Day against the Death
Penalty on 10 October 2005, Amnesty International
urges China to accelerate reforms aimed at reducing
the use of the death penalty with a view to abolishing
the death penalty as soon as possible.
On 27 September 2005, the Deputy Director of the
Supreme People’s Court (SPC), Wan E’xiang, announced
that the SPC was establishing three branch courts to
conduct reviews of death sentences. Unnamed officials
were quoted as saying that this would cut the number
of executions by 30 per cent. Chinese legal reformists
have made similar claims, although admit that in the
absence of full national statistics on the death
penalty -- which continue to be classified a ‘state
secret’ -- this is little more than an estimate.
In apparent acknowledgment of political interference
in the trial process at lower levels, Wan E’xiang
stated that ‘[this reform] will ensure the death
penalty process is truly neutral from administrative
departments and prevent the intervention of other
powers.”
Amnesty International welcomes the re-instatement of
SPC review of death sentences in the hope that this
will indeed reduce the number of those sentenced to
death and provide a greater safeguard against unfair
trials. However, the organization notes that ensuring
SPC review of capital trials does not necessarily mean
that such trials will meet international human rights
standards.
For example, in December 2003, Liu Yong, a wealthy
entrepreneur was executed after the SPC upheld his
conviction for involvement in violent criminal gang
activities and corruption despite concerns that the
police may have tortured him into making a confession.
A lower court had commuted his death sentence as a
result of these allegations, but the SPC later ruled
that these grounds were not sufficient to exempt Liu
Yong from execution. He was killed by lethal injection
in a mobile execution chamber near the courthouse.
Amnesty International also stresses that
re-introducing SPC review may have the adverse effect
of further entrenching the death penalty system in
China. There is also a risk that recruiting judicial
personnel from lower levels will take valuable
resources away from local courts, thereby reducing the
quality of decision-making at that level. As a genuine
step towards abolition, it must also be accompanied by
other measures, including full transparency on the use
of the death penalty nationwide and a reduction in the
number of crimes punishable by the death penalty.
National statistics on the numbers of those sentenced
to death and executed remain classified as a ‘state
secret’. In his report to the Commission on Human
Rights this year, the UN Special Rapporteur on
extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stated
that ‘such secrecy is incompatible with human rights
standards in many respects. It undermines many of the
safeguards which might operate to prevent errors or
abuses and to ensure fair and just proceedings at all
stages.’ He added that ‘secrecy prevents any informed
public debated about capital punishment within the
relevant society’. Amnesty International also notes
that transparency is essential in order to be able to
assess whether the new SPC review process will indeed
lead to a reduction in the use of the death penalty as
predicted.
The death penalty remains applicable to around 68
crimes in China. They include non-violent offences,
such as committing tax fraud, embezzling state
property and accepting a bribe. Chinese legal
academics opposed to the death penalty have
recommended reducing the scope by, for example,
eliminating the punishment for economic offences, but
these calls have so far gone unheeded.
Several cases of miscarriages of justice highlighted
in the Chinese press over recent months have given
rise to considerable public disquiet about unfair
trials in China. They include the case of Nie Shubin,
a labourer who was executed as a murderer and rapist
in 1995. Reports suggested at the time that he had
confessed to the crimes under torture. In March this
year, a detainee arrested in connection with another
case, reportedly confessed to Nie Shubin’s crimes
voluntarily, apparently describing the crime scene
precisely.
In order to safeguard the right to life, Amnesty
International is urging the Chinese authorities to
introduce a moratorium on executions pending full
abolition of the death penalty in law as this would
serve as the best safeguard against executing the
innocent convicted after unfair trials.
China remains the world leader in its use of the death
penalty. According to Amnesty International estimates,
over 3,000 people were executed and 6,000 people
sentenced to death last year alone. The true figures
are believed to be much higher. In March 2004, a
senior member of the National People’s Congress
announced that China executes around 10,000 people per
year.
Organ transplants
A series of reports over recent years have suggested
that organs are regularly extracted from executed
prisoners in China to be sold for transplantation. In
a recent example, the Guardiannewspaper (London)
reported on 13 September 2005 that an unnamed Chinese
cosmetics company was using skin harvested from the
corpses of executed prisoners to develop beauty
products for sale overseas. Amnesty International is
unable to corroborate this story, but remains deeply
concerned about continuing reports of such practices,
some of which suggest that as many as 90 per cent of
organs used in transplants in China come from executed
prisoners.
Procurement of human organs based on commercial
trading and without meaningful free and informed
consent is contrary to World Health Organization
guidelines on human organ procurement and
transplantation. The involvement of transplantation
surgeons in such procedures breaches ethical guidance
of the international Transplantation Society and the
World Medical Association.
Amnesty International has long called on China to ban
such practices. In June 2005, the Chinese Health
Minister, Huang Jiefu, announced that China planned to
issue regulations which would ban the trade in human
organs and reinforce the principles of voluntary
donation and free and informed consent.
To Amnesty International’s knowledge, these
regulations remain under discussion and have not yet
been formally adopted. Given the cruel, inhuman and
degrading nature of the death penalty, the
organization considers that there will be few, if any,
circumstances under which a prisoner facing imminent
execution will be able to “voluntarily” give “free and
informed consent” to having their organs extracted.
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